

Class . ETtis- 

Book. ' 3 


Copyright! 1 !? 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSITS 
































MUST WE SIN? 


BY 

HOWARD W. SWEETEN 
Evangelist 

A treatise of the sin question from the 
standpoint of reason and revelation. 


Introduction by 

Rev. L. L. Pickett, Wilmore, Ky. 


Jt & & 


Pentecostal Publishing Company, 
Louisville, Ky. 


mvts 

.s? 


Copyright, 1919. 

BY 

♦ 

Howard W. Sweeten. 


NOV -5 1919 


©CI.A535582 




INTRODUCTION. 


Sin ! this is the problem of the ages. For 
this world there is no other. He who can 
solve the sin problem can relieve the burden 
of the race. He who can destroy sin can 
save the world. Thank God, a Savior is 
found, a sin-destroyer is at hand in the Per- 
son of Jesus Christ! “He shall save His peo- 
ple from their sins.” But this necessitates the 
desire for salvation from sin, the yielding of 
heart, life and will to Him. 

The trouble is, men have too little con- 
sciousness of sin — its heinousness, its ex- 
ceeding sinfulness. Men have confused 
crime with sin and sin with crime. The wri- 
ter remembers how that years ago he read 
the confession of David, “Against Thee, 
Thee only, have I sinned and done this evil in 
Thy sight.” (Psalm 51:5). I said, “No, 
David, you have sinned against society; 
against the home; against the family; 
against the race.” But there the Scripture 
was, unchanged, written by inspiration; re- 
corded in the word of truth — “Against Thee, 
Thee only, have I sinned.” 

Accepting the record as inspired, I sought 
its meaning, and soon saw that all sin is 


against God. You do not sin against men, 
only against your Maker, your Redeemer. 

Let me see: A man commits murder. 
What is it? It is crime, a violation of hu- 
man law. He is tried by the courts and is 
sentenced to be hung. As a crime, he has ex- 
piated his guilt. He cannot be punished 
twice for the same crime. But hold ; he has 
also sinned against God, and God will judge 
him and sentence him to Hell. 

Now suppose he hates another ; but dreads 
to face the courts and be hung, so he refrains 
from committing the act of murder. He has 
sinned but has not committed a crime ; hence 
the courts have no case against him, but God 
has. ‘‘He that hateth his brother, his fel- 
lowman, is a murderer.” And God's sen- 
tence hangs over him as though the deed had 
been done. 

So with theft: A man may covet the 
money in a bank and watch his opportunity 
to burglarize the institution ; but no suitable 
chance occurs. The law of man has no case 
against him ; he has committed no crime ; but 
before God he is a full-fledged thief. Sin lies 
in the heart, in the will, and is complete and 
entire there, without the act. “He that look- 
eth to lust, hath committed adultery al- 


ready.” The law of man has no case; there 
is indeed no crime; but there is sin; full- 
fledged, horrible, soul-destroying sin. 0, 
that men might realize the enormity of sin 
against a holy God ! 

Brother Sweeten has given us a valuable, 
true, a searching, really a powerful book. 
Read it ; circulate it ; pray God to use it. And 
give the warning everywhere against the 
blighting, corrupting, God-defying thing we 
call SIN ! 


L. L. Pickett. 


PREFACE. 


For sometime it has been in the mind of 
the writer to put into the hands of earnest, 
honest and candid seekers after light a plain 
and concise treatise oh the all-important 
question, “Must we sin?” 

When we look out upon the busy scenes of 
human life and activity, and remember that 
we are living in an age of hurry and hustle, 
we recognize the fact that the average per- 
son, whether he can or not, will not take 
time to delve into an exhaustive treatise of 
the sin question. Yet of all questions in the 
world that need our eager, earnest investiga- 
tion, there are none of such magnitude and 
importance as the question of sin. Upon this 
question hinges the happiness of individuals 
and nations, both here and hereafter. Sin 
is either conducive to happiness, or detri- 
mental to happiness; and if upon the sin 
question hinges true happiness, we ought to 
know it, and govern ourselves accordingly. 
Therefore, if we must sin, how much or how 
little is a question of vital importance. And 
if provision is made to completely deliver us 
from all sin, it is imperative that we should 
know it. 


We feel that in pleading the case of right- 
eousness against sin, we are pleading a cause 
of greater importance than was ever plead 
in any earthly court. Sin is a grave and in- 
finite offense, and is, therefore, punishable 
with a grave and infinite punishment. Sin 
has made every human being in the world 
the defendant that must appear before the 
Judge of all the earth to hear His decision as 
to their destiny, which is based solely and 
exclusively on the sin question. It is, there- 
fore, the paramount need of humanity to so 
order their lives that they will be in perfect 
harmony with the teaching of the ‘'thus saith 
the Lord,” which is the one source of au- 
thority on this subject. 

What or how much God can do for a per- 
son is not left to a few church dignitaries, 
but to the word of God. It is the object of 
the writer, therefore, to give a fair and im- 
partial discussion of the subject in this lit- 
tle volume, both from reason and revelation, 
without fear or favor of any particular creed 
or denomination. If we are told we must 
sin, upon what is such a statement based? If 
we are told we need not sin, what is our au- 
thority for such a declaration? 

We make no apology for presenting this 


little volume to a world already filled with 
innumerable books ; neither have we written 
its contents with the ideia of a superior 
knowledge of the subject; nor have we at- 
tempted to treat the matter in any other 
than a concise and plain manner. We, there- 
fore, urge the reader to give us a fair and 
unprejudiced hearing, that we may be mu- 
tually blest and profited together as we study 
the question of the world’s greatest malady, 
in the light of reason and revelation. 

We remember that at one time a certain 
newspaper, commenting on the work of an 
evangelist, said, “He is neither handsome 
nor eloquent, but he has the happy faculty of 
telling the truth.” If the same can be said 
of this little volume, and it proves and con- 
vinces inquirers on the subject, and is a 
blessing to souls, we will be gratified, and 
amply repaid for all our efforts. Nothing 
would please the writer more than to know 
that his humble efforts to turn souls from 
darkness to light, and from the power of 
Satan unto God, had met with a success. To 
this end we ask the reader to follow us care- 
fully and prayerfully through its contents, 
and earnestly to try to ascertain the correct 
solution to the question, “Must we sin?” 

Howard W. Sweeten. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

The Origin of Sin 11 

CHAPTER II. 

What is Sin? 26 

CHAPTER III. 

Sins vs. Mistakes 39 

CHAPTER IV. 

Temptation vs. Sins 57 

CHAPTER V. 

Must We Sin? 66 

CHAPTER VI. 

What saith the Lord? 98 

CHAPTER VII. 

The Other Side 125 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Consequences 158 







































































































































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CHAPTER I. 


THE ORIGIN OF SIN. 

As we start penning the lines of this lit- 
tle volume, our nation is in a mighty conflict 
for liberty and humanity. The fight is on; 
we are in the midst of the most gruelling and 
terrible war the world has ever known; the 
scripture, “Nation shall rise against nation,” 
is being fulfilled, without a doubt; and thus 
the terrible conflict threatens to involve all 
the nations of the earth, and has already 
taken on such magnitude as to be called 
“The World War.” 

From the time that sin befell the human 
family, the seeds of strife have been sown 
broadcast in the world, until, look where you 
will, in every nook and corner of the earth, 
you will find discord and friction. It began 
with righteous Abel and wicked Cain, and 
from thence on down to the present, history 
reveals page after page of contention and 
sorrow. Who can picture the conflicts be- 
ll 


12 


MUST WE SIN? 


tween individuals ; the political conflicts ; the 
scenes of rebellions and revolutions; the 
struggle to obtain and maintain certain gov- 
ernmental rights and territorial boundaries? 
Who can picture the sorrows of domestic 
life, or even the sectarian prejudice that has 
produced religious division, until, undoubt- 
edly, many times God’s work has been hin- 
dered, and the Holy Spirit grieved by the 
lack of harmony among the professed follow- 
ers of the living God? 

What rebellions, and insurrections, and 
conflicts are recorded on the pages of both 
sacred and profane history! The thunders 
of the artillery of one battle have scarcely 
died away, until another great struggle is 
upon us; so that the earth has become red- 
dened with the blood of many wars, and the 
years of universal peace among the nations 
are greatly exceeded by the years of national 
strife. 

Gur own country, a peace-loving nation, 
has had, on an average, a war about every 
twenty-two years; while thirty-three years 
is about the longest period in which we have 
been blest with national peace. The present 


MUST WE SIN? 


13 


great war (world war) is no doubt the great- 
est conflict of all time ; yet great as it is, and 
much as may depend upon its results, there 
is, and has been, a conflict of greater magni- 
tude waging upon the earth for six thousand 
years, without a single moment of truce. 
This surpasses the great world war ; in fact, 
all wars combined cannot compare from any 
standpoint with this conflict. It is called the 
conflict of the ages, and is very properly 
such, for it was launched in the Garden of 
Eden, and outweighs all wars combined, in 
length of time, in relation to numbers in- 
volved, and in the matter of final results. 
This is seen by the fact that all the wars of 
the world have used a comparatively small 
portion of the earth’s population, and only a 
nation now and then, here and there ; but the 
conflict, to which we refer, has laid its gory 
hands upon every soul ever born into the 
world, but here three worlds are vitally con- 
cerned, heaven, earth and hell. Here our 
struggles are limited in results to certain 
governmental rights, indemnities, and terri- 
torial boundaries ; but upon the result of this 
great conflict of the ages, the fight with sin, 


14 


MUST WE SIN? 


hinges our eternal destiny for weal or woe, 
life or death, for heaven or hell. 

No man upon earth can be neutral. “He 
that is not with me is against me,” says Je- 
sus ; and the very fact that thousands of peo- 
ple are indolent, idle, and indifferent, doing 
nothing for God, brands them as allies of Sa- 
tan and children of hell. Thus you will ob- 
serve in the case of the man in the parable 
of the talents, who returned the one talent, 
that he was called an unprofitable servant; 
bound hand and foot and cast into outer 
darkness, where there was wailing and 
gnashing of teeth. What had he done? Was 
he a sinner above all others? Certainly not. 
He had only done all that any man need to 
do to be lost. What was it? Nothing. Do- 
ing nothing has been, and will be, the cause 
of the damnation of many souls. 

If there is a God, (and I do not say if be- 
cause I doubt His being, but merely to make 
the point logical) with moral attributes such 
as our Bible teaches, and such as we believe 
Him to possess, it is plainly evident there is 
something in the world that God never 
made; something that is a disturbing ele- 


MUST WE SIN? 


15 


ment ; that is rebellious against His kingdom 
and government ; that is anarchistic in prin- 
ciple ; that is not subject to the law of God. 
It is the author of every sorrow, every heart- 
ache, every disappointment, every defeat of 
righteousness, and is at the bottom of all the 
world’s troubles. It made a devil out of an 
archangel; it crucified God’s only begotten 
Son ; and that something, God, in His infinite 
wisdom, has pleased to call sin S-l-N, SIN. 

You and I, dear reader, have never seen a 
world like God made ; all that our poor mor- 
tal eyes have ever been privileged to look 
upon has suffered from the curse of the 
dreadful malady of sin. We have never seen 
a man as God originally made him. All the 
human family we have ever seen has been 
cursed by sin. They are subject to aches and 
pains, distorted with disease, bent with age, 
and are destined soon to wither and die. 

When God made the world, He made it 
pure and holy; man was holy; hence the 
world was happy. Man walked in sweet fel- 
lowship with his Maker, and basked in the 
smile of his Creator. There was no antagon- 
ism; nothing foul nor unclean; no friction in 


16 


MUST WE SIN? 


all of God’s creation; nothing grating nor 
discordant. The world was at peace, and all 
creation in loving harmony. The land in- 
deed was delightsome; its valleys were car- 
peted with velvet green, and its hillsides 
were decked with beautiful, thornless vege- 
tation; every tree that grew in its fertile 
soil was pleasant to look upon, while trees 
whose fruits were good for food grew in 
abundance. The tree also of “the knowledge 
of good and evil” grew in the midst of this 
Edenic Paradise. 

At this period of our world’s history, you 
might have sought from the river to the ends 
of the earth for misery, pain or guilt, and 
found only holiness, happiness and harmony. 
But alas! It did not long remain in this 
Edenic state. It was soon invaded by a 
subtle and powerful foe ; and by one man, we 
are told in the Book, sin entered into the 
world, and “death by sin, and so death passed 
upon all men for that all have sinned.” 
(Horn. 5:12). 

Sin is an infinite malady ; and undoubtedly 
had its existence before the foundation of 
the world. Somewhere out in the great eter- 


MUST WE SIN? 


17 


nity sin evidently had its origin; possibly, 
owing to the fact that God endows His intel- 
ligent creatures with volition, and that what- 
ever is susceptible to use is susceptible also 
to abuse, a being chose disobedience to his 
creator and fell from the heights of holiness 
to the depths of sin. 

There are many things which we do not 
know; perhaps, because it is not necessary 
for us to know them, and because they are 
beyond our finite conception ; hence, no man 
knows the exact location of heaven or hell, 
though they both exist and have a definite 
location; for there can be no place without 
location ; and Jesus said in regard to heaven, 
“I go to prepare a place for you.” ( Jno. 14 : 
2.) Of hell, the rich man said : ‘’Send him to 
my father's house, for I have five brethren, 
that he may testify unto them, lest they also 
come into this place of torment." (Luke 16: 
28.) 

Though God has clearly revealed the exist- 
ence of both heaven and hell, yet for some 
cause, in His infinite wisdom, He has not re- 
vealed their exact location. Perhaps it is be- 
cause such a revelation would not make the 


18 


MUST WE SIN? 


motive for repentance any stronger, and per- 
haps because if He should tell us its exact 
location, our acquaintance with space out- 
side the earth is so limited, we would know 
very little, if any more, than we do at the 
present. 

So, likewise, with the origin of sin; our 
knowledge of events before the foundation of 
the world is decidedly limited. Whether 
sin had its origin with Lucifer, or away back 
ages before, we do not know any more than 
we know where eternity had its beginning; 
it is beyond our sphere of thought, and the 
only way possible for us to know exactly 
how, when, and where it began is by Divine 
revelation ; and God, for some wise purpose, 
has seen fit to make no such revelation to 
His creatures, as the knowledge of its begin- 
ning is of little consequence. All that we 
are, or need to be, concerned about, is its 
origin upon earth, and its effects upon our 
present and future being. 

The Scripture reveals the fact that a being 
called Satan rebelled against God and His 
government, and being cast away, encoun- 
tered Adam and Eve in the Garden, and sue- 


MUST WE SIN? 


19 


eeeded in beguiling them into like disobedi- 
ence. Thus by the disobedience of this man, 
sin entered the sacred precincts of the beau- 
tiful Garden; the occupants were driven 
from their happy abode; the beautiful Gar- 
den became a place of thorns and thistles; 
the earth, which had basked in the smile of 
its Creator, was now blackened by the curse 
of sin ; and in less than fifteen hundred years, 
owing to the increased spirit of disobedience, 
God was compelled to destroy with one great 
deluge all that He had made. 

Today every cold wintry blast, every ter- 
rific storm, every volcanic eruption, every 
barren field, every tearing briar, all combine 
in awful accusation against man and his un- 
holy deeds. Every breaking heart, every 
distorted frame racked with pain, every dis- 
appointed life, every defeated soul, owes all 
its sorrows to sin. 

One writer, speaking of sin and its origin, 
says; “Sin is an immense river running 
through the secret channels of hell ; it broke 
out upon this world in the Garden of Eden. 
Ever enlarging, this river flows on around 
the world ; no flowers grow on its banks ; no 


20 


MUST WE SIN? 


foliage waves beside its murky tide; ever- 
lasting lightning pencils every angry wave, 
and hell’s terrific thunders bound from bank 
to bank with awful crash. Surely no one 
would visit this awful place; but, alas! its 
shores are lined from source to mouth with 
human wretches. They crowd to plunge into 
the fearful tide ; all sexes, all colors, all con- 
ditions, all classes. The mother decks her 
daughter in the height of fashion, and side 
by side they plunge into the stream. Into 
this current the young man, thoughtless and 
laughing, runs. The old man follows, with 
his hoary locks streaming in the wind like 
the shredded rigging of a storm-ridden ship ; 
he pauses a moment on the verge, but is soon 
hurled into the seething tide.” What a pic- 
ture this writer has given us ! We need only 
to look about us on every hand and behold its 
dire results. 

It is an established fact that sin is here. 
It is not a theory, not a fancy, not an alle- 
gory, but an awful, indisputable fact, Chris- 
tian Science and a few other heresies to the 
contrary, notwithstanding. Laugh at it all 
you will, deny it all you will, yet it is here in 


MUST WE SIN? 


21 


all its gory criminality ; its fruits are mani- 
fest daily in an indisputable manner. If 
there is no such thing as sin, what is it that 
has reddened the earth with crime ? If there 
is no sin, what is it that causes that vast 
army of one hundred thousand men every 
year to fill drunkards' graves and an alco- 
holic hell; and to go to the dreadful judg- 
ment to meet that God who has said: “No 
drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God?" 
If there is no sin, what causes that army of 
fallen girls to bury their faces in their hands 
and weep for the days of their virtue and 
purity ? From whence does all the brawling 
strife, contention, malice, enmity and hatred 
proceed, if not from sin ? Reason all you will, 
sin is here both in principle and practice. It 
stalks through our streets at mid-day, and 
mows down its victims by countless thou- 
sands, victims who are helpless to resist its 
power. As light is universal though some 
may deny it, and shut their eyes and refuse 
to admit any of it, so the malady of sin is 
universal, though we may dispute and deny 
its existence. “For all have sinned and come 
short of the glory of God." (Rom. 3:23.) 


22 


MUST WE SIN? 


And as the apostle writes to the Ephesians, 
we “are all by nature the children of wrath” 
(Eph. 2:3), not by a long life of transgres- 
sion, but by nature. 

Thus sin is a universal, inherent malady, 
coming to all of Adam’s posterity through 
the offense in the Garden of Eden. Hence, 
Paul writes to the Romans, “Therefore by 
the offense of one, judgment came upon all 
men to condemnation” (Rom. 5:18), and “by 
one man sin entered into the world, and 
death by sin; and so death passed upon all 
men, for all have sinned.” (Rom. 5 :12) . And 
as by grace we are separated from the devil 
and joined to God, so by sin we are separated 
from God and joined to the devil. Sin is no 
legitimate part of our being; it is a poison- 
ous malady, a fungus growth, an abnormal 
condition, a parasite of the soul, a moral de- 
formity planted in our common father 
Adam, through his Edenic transgression, 
and inherited by all his unfortunate posteri- 
ty. 

Of all the afflictions upon earth, there are 
none equal in gravity to the plague of sin 
upon the soul. What leprosy is to the body, 


MUST WE SIN? 


23 


sin is to the soul, and more. What insanity 
is to the mind, sin is to the soul, and more. 
It is more dire in its results than cancer, 
more deadly than tuberculosis, more conta- 
gious than smallpox. The fact that the 
whole world is contaminated by the offense 
of one man speaks of its dreadful nature. 
The fires of hell remind us of its evil; the 
horrors of conscience remind us of its guilt ; 
the dying Saviour reminds us of its gravity; 
while the hardness of men’s hearts tells us in 
unmistakable terms of its dreadful effect. We 
ought no more to envy the sinner his sinful 
and worldly pleasure, than we would a man 
his cancer or leprosy. Who would envy a 
man his money, if that money were to cast 
his soul into hell ? Who begrudges a man his 
entertainment at the theater, his caresses in 
the ball-room, his fine clothes, his daily lux- 
uries, his hours of revelry and frolic, if these 
are purchased at the infinite price of his 
soul? 

Summing up the matter of sin as a whole* 
and taking into consideration the effect it 
produces, and the inevitable result it brings, 
we cannot but say : It were better for one to 


24 


MUST WE SIN? 


be an invalid all his life, and to be thrown 
upon the mercy of the world as an object of 
charity, than to be afflicted with sin, and 
finally cast by an infinite hand into outer 
darkness, where there shall be weeping and 
wailing and gnashing of teeth. Yea! he 
had better be an idiot, and be unconditional- 
ly saved, than to be an intelligent, responsi- 
ble creature, and refuse to break with sin 
and be cast into hell. 

Let the reader bear in mind that the mala- 
dy and curse of sin are upon the race ; sin is 
on our hands, and some disposition must be 
made of the matter. To ignore it will not 
settle it; to ridicule it does not evade it; in 
fact, a question of such magnitude and im- 
portance must not be evaded, we must inevi- 
tably face it; why not now before it is too 
late? True, there are other questions in life 
that demand our attention; our education, 
our business, our moral and social standing, 
our health, our duties as a citizen, and so on ; 
but after all, if we succeed in achieving suc- 
cess in all these things, and fail to properly 
solve and settle the sin question, our lives 
have been sadly and woefully misspent; for 


MUST WE SIN? 


25 


upon this question hinges not temporal and 
material prosperity and happiness, but eter- 
nal destiny. 

To this purpose, therefore, the pages of 
this volume are prayerfully dedicated, 
that we may know the truth concerning the 
most important question in our lives, and 
find a proper solution to it, for upon this 
hangs our destiny, both here and hereafter. 


CHAPTER II. 

WHAT IS SIN? 

Inasmuch as it is our purpose, in the fol- 
lowing pages of this book, to discuss the sin 
problem, it will be necessary to first give the 
reader a proper analysis of the subject. 
“What is sin?” and “What is not sin?” and 
“How shall we deal with it?” are questions 
of vital importance. No first class physician 
would undertake to prescribe a remedy for a 
patient until he had first properly diagnosed 
the malady. In order to know the remedy, 
we must first know the disease; hence, the 
caption of this chapter, “What is sin?” 

At this particular time, our reader's atten- 
tion is called not to the remedy for sin, nor 
to the possibility of deliverance from sin, 
but merely to the nature and effects of sin. 
Sin is two-fold in its existence, actual sin 
and inherent sin. One denotes action, the 
other condition ; one is what we do, the other 
is what we are. Actual sin is defined in 1 
John 3 :4, “Whosoever committeth sin trans- 
26 


MUST WE SIN? 


27 


gresseth also the law : for sin is a transgres- 
sion 1 of the law.” Here sin is defined in its 
actual sense. Actual sin consists of an act 
of transgression of God’s law. Inherent sin 
is the sin principle, sometimes referred to as 
original sin, moral defilement, depravity and 
similar terms. One writer expresses actual 
sin as the “shoots of sin,” and inherent sin as 
“the roots of sin.” Sin, therefore, is not con- 
fined to action alone ; but is a dark, crooked, 
wicked, rebellious, devilish nature, inherited 
by all of Adam’s posterity as a result of his 
fall in the Garden of Eden. Inherent sin is 
clearly defined in such Scriptures as Eph. 
2 :3. “All by nature the children of wrath.” 
Nothing could make us the children of 
wrath but sin; yet, this we are, says the 
apostle, “by nature .” In referring to the 
same thing in Rom. 7:17 he calls it “the 
sin that dwelleth in me;” which is clearly 
and distinctly separate in character from 
actual sin, in that one denotes inherent prin- 
ciple, and the other volitional action. In 
thus describing sin, we are in perfect har- 
mony with the teaching of all orthodox 
churches, as will be noted by the following 


28 


MUST WE SIN? 


extracts culled from the creeds of some of 
the leading denominations. 

We quote from the “Shorter Catechism of 
the Westminster Assembly,” published by 
the Presbyterian Board of Publication, page 
5, question 14, “What is sin?” Answer. Sin 
is any want of conformity unto, or trans- 
gression of the law of God.” Thus we have 
the two-fold nature of sin expressed in the 
“ trangression of” and “conformity unto ” 
the law of God. On page six, question eigh- 
teen, “Wherein consists the sinfulness of 
that estate wherein man fell?” Answer: 
“The sinfulness of that estate wherein man 
fell consists in the guilt of Adam’s first sin, 
the want of original righteousness, and the 
corruption of his whole nature, which is 
commonly called original sin; together with 
all the actual transgressions which proceed 
from it.” 

Thus the Presbyterians acknowledge the 
two-fold nature of sin in the expressions, 
“the corruption of his whole nature,” and 
“with all the transgressions that proceed 
from it.” 

This catechism goes on further to say: 


MUST WE SIN? 


29 


“Question sixteen. Did all mankind fall in 
Adam's transgression? Answer: The cove- 
nant being made with Adam, not only for 
himself, but for his posterity, all mankind 
condescending from him by ordinary genera- 
tion, sinned in him and fell with him in his 
first transgression." This is not only a por- 
tion of catechism, but better still, is in per- 
fect accord with the teaching of the “Thus 
saith the Lord," which is in fact, the only au- 
thority. 

The “Bible Class Catechism," published 
by the “American Baptist Publication So- 
ciety" of Philadelphia, also interprets the sin 
question in like manner. On page thirteen, 
question forty-five, “What is sin? Answer: 
Sin is any want of harmony in our hearts 
and lives with the revealed will of God." 
Here is the double nature of sin recognized 
again in the expression “hearts" (inward 
condition) and “lives" (outward action). 
The heart is the seat of the affections; its 
condition determines our character ; as is in- 
dicated by such Scriptures as Prov. 23:7, 
“As he thinketh in his heart so is he," and 
Prov. 4:23, Mark 7:21-23 and other*. “Out 


30 


MUST WE SIN? 


of the heart proceed the issues of life.” A 
man is never any better than his heart ; the 
heart is the barometer to both moral and 
spiritual character. 

But to further discuss this catechism. 
Question forty-six. “What was the effect of 
Adam's sin upon himtself? Answer: His 
apostasy from God was complete, and in his 
nature was no restoring principle.” Ques- 
tion forty-seven. “How did this effect his 
posterity? Answer: They inherited a dis- 
position of alienation from God, man's moral 
nature being vitiated at birth, and in conse- 
quence all mankind are now sinners. (Rom. 
5:12,. Rom. 3:9) ” 

Before leaving the matter of orthodox: 
teaching on this subject from the standpoint 
of church creeds, let us briefly note what the 
Methodists have to say on the subject. We 
quote from the joint catechism of the M. E. 
Church and the M. E. Church, South, pub- 
lished by Jennings & Graham, page thirty- 
six, question one hundred and fourteen. 
“What is sin? Answer: Sin is any violation 
of God's law, or any lack of conformity 
thereto.” Here again we see the acknowl- 


MUST WE SIN? 


31 


edgment of its two-fold nature as taught by- 
other denominations and the word of God. 
Investigation might be carried further, but 
it is useless to do so, for we would find that 
both creeds and scripture teach practically 
the same, and that in reminding the reader 
of this fact, we only wish him to know that 
the truth recorded on these pages is perfect- 
ly orthodox and sound. 

Webster, who is an accepted authority in 
defining terms, also says sin is “a transgres- 
sion of God's law." Here is sin in the actual 
sense. He also declares it is “moral de- 
ficiency in character." Here it is in being or 
principle ; this is in harmony with the Scrip- 
ture ; the first denoting the conduct of a voli- 
tional creature in transgressing God's law, 
as defined in 1 John 3 :4 ; the latter denoting 
inherent character, as defined in Rom. 7:17, 
and in other places. It is useless to quote 
further authorities, for all are in harmony 
in regard to this matter. We think, there- 
fore, that no apology is necessary in present- 
ing a truth so universally taught and ac- 
cepted. 

Sin is not only disobedience to God's com- 


32 


MUST WE SIN? 


mandments, but is a polluted condition of 
the soul as well, it is hell’s narcotic, Satan’s 
hypnotic power, and carries in itself that 
which destroys a man’s better judgment and 
sensibilities ; so that a man can sin and 
laugh about it ; sin and brag about it ; he can 
use the name of the very God that holds the 
breath he breathes, in blasphemy apparently 
utterly regardless of the fact that God has 
said, “I w T ill not hold him guiltless that tak- 
eth my name in vain.” 

Standing on the verge of perdition, sin 
enables us to take the few remaining days 
God has given us in which to repent, and 
use them in sinning the more against Him. 
So hpynotic is the power of sin that men, 
under its control, are made to prefer wrong 
to right, wickedness to righteousness, drunk- 
enness to sobriety, darkness to light, death 
to life and hell to heaven. 

It carries with it great refractive power, 
that is, power to make wrong seem right, 
lust is interpreted to be love, brutishness is 
considered manly, and vulgarity is made to 
seem funny. Oh, how it blinds and hypno- 
tizes. “Are you aware, sinner,” asked the 


MUST WE SIN? 


33 


great evangelist Chas. G. Finney, “that you 
have made God your enemy, and have you 
thought how terrible a thing this is? If you 
were in any measure dependent upon your 
fellowman, you would not like to make him 
your enemy.” “The student of this college,” 
he continues, “is careful not to make the 
faculty, or anyone of them his enemy. The 
child has the same attitude in regard to his 
parent. Now consider what you are doing 
toward God, that God who holds your breath, 
your life, your very destiny in His power; 
let Him withdraw His hand and you will 
sink into hell of your own gravity. On a 
slippery steep you stand, and the billows of 
damnation roll below. Oh, sinner ! Are you 
aware that when you lie down at night, with 
your weapons of rebellion against Him in 
your hands, His blazing eye is upon you ; are 
you aware of this?” Continuing he draws 
the following descriptive picture of the de- 
ceitfulness of sin. “Eternity,” says he, “so 
vast, and its issues so dreadful, yet this sin- 
ner drives furiously to hell as if he were on 
the high road to heaven! And all this only 
because he is infatuated with the pleasures 


34 


MUST WE SIN? 


of sin for a season. At first view, he seems 
really to have made the mistake of hell for 
heaven ; but, on a closer examination, you see 
it is no real mistake of the intellect; he 
knows very well the difference between hell 
and heaven ; but he is practically deluding 
himself under the impulses of his mad heart ! 
The mournful fact is, he loves sin, and after 
it he will go ! Alas, alas ! so insane he rushes 
greedily on to his own damnation, just as if 
he were in pursuit of heaven !” 

We would deem it a great calamity if in- 
sanity should invade our home, and one of 
our family should become the victim of its 
dreadful consequences; yet, it would not be 
amiss to say the consequences of insanity 
would be a blessing compared to the final 
consequences of sin. Insanity is a mortal 
affliction, and when this mortal shall put on 
immortality, will be no more; but sin is an 
immortal malady, and its consequences 
never end. Sin does not spring from a dis- 
eased brain, but from a defiled heart ; there- 
fore, death cannot cure it, and the resurrec- 
tion will only bring it forth to everlasting 
shame and contempt, and hell will be its eter- 


MUST WE SIN? 


35 


nal abode. The fact is, sin is a type of in- 
sanity, it is moral insanity, and may be 
clearly recognized by the conduct of its vic- 
tims. If a man in the physical world should 
act as though he had no physical wants, and 
make no provision for none we would not 
hesitate to pronounce him crazy ; yet, this is 
exactly what the sinner does every day in 
regard to the needs of his soul ; he acts as if 
he had no soul to consider, he regards not the 
pleasures of heaven or the horrors of hell ; he 
acts as if he had never heard of the judg- 
ment, and as if he had no responsibility 
whatever to his God. 

We fear that as intelligent creatures, we 
do not look upon sin with proper gravity. It 
is usually looked upon as a light, indifferent 
something, the effects and results of which 
amount to very little one way or another; 
while the facts in the case are, that sin is 
an open insult to Almighty Gcd, and every 
time you break His commandments you in- 
vite His unmitigated wrath. 

We recently clipped from the Herald of 
Holiness the following, which indicates the 
average person's attitude toward sin: “It 


36 


MUST WE SIN? 


is related 1 that after a sermon by a distin- 
guished minister, dealing most pointedly 
with sin, one of the church officers visited 
the pastor and remonstrated as follows : ‘We 
do not want you to talk as plainly as you do 
about sin, because if our boys and girls hear 
you talking so much about sin they will 
more easily become sinners. Call it a mis- 
take if you will, do not speak so plainly about 
sin/ The pastor took down a small bottle 
of strychnine, marked ‘poison/ and showed 
it to his visitor, saying, “I see what you 
want me to do. You want me to change the 
label. Now, suppose I take this label off and 
substitute another, say, ‘Essence of Pepper- 
mint/ do you not see what happens? The 
milder you make your label the more danger- 
ous you make your poison/ Jeroboam 
changed the label and the more easily led 
Israel into the sin of idolatry. Sin is the 
same deadly poison whatever label you put 
on it, but the milder you make the label the 
more likely people are to be beguiled/' 

Having thus called the reader’s attention 
to the nature of sin, there yet remains the 
difficult task of distinguishing sins from 


MUST WE SIN? 


37 


mistakes. From this on, therefore, we will 
deal only with the question of actual sin, and 
try to determine the solution to the question 
of the title. It is therefore necessary to 
draw a definite conclusion as to the differ- 
ence between sins and mistakes. As one 
writer says: “Is everything some folks op- 
pose, sin because they oppose it? How far 
may a man be entitled to use his own intel- 
igence and conscience under the light of the 
Word? Is one man's judgment the final ap- 
peal for another? There is no safe guide 
but the Word. “Thy word is a lamp unto 
my feet." To be guided in any other way 
means interminable trouble, blindness, loss 
and folly. Hold steady to what God's word 
directs and you will go straight. I would 
like to please every good man, but to do so 
I would need to have long hair, wear a broad- 
brimmed hat, keep two Sabbaths, be bap- 
tized in all conceivable ways, with all kinds 
of elements, eat three meals a day, do with- 
out breakfast, drink no coffee, smell no per- 
fume, eat no meat, wear soiled collars and 
cuffs, never shave, shave every day, kneel in 
prayer, stand in prayer, lie on your face in 


38 


MUST WE SIN? 


prayer, never smile, smile all the time, never 
criticise, find fault with all who differ with 
me, have no doctor when sick, use all intel- 
ligent means of recovery, fast, never fast, 
Lord to whom shall I go to get out of such a 
mess? Thou hast the words of eternal life 
“Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and 
afterward receive me to glory.” Happy am I 
that God has not left us in such a tangle. 
“The path of the just is as a shining light.” 
“In Him is no darkness at all. The narrow 
way is a straight way.” The whole matter 
culminates then in the question, “What is the 
element in our actions that makes them sins, 
and what element prevents them from being 
sins?” This brings us to the discussion of 
chapter three, “Sins vs. Mistakes.” 


CHAPTER III. 

SINS VS. MISTAKES. 

Many honest people are led to believe they 
are sinners, and lower the standard of Chris- 
tian living to a level of every day sinning and 
repenting, and repenting and sinning, for no 
other reason than that they do not properly 
consider the distinction between a sin and a 
mistake. Before the question of whether or 
not we must sin can be intelligently answer- 
ed, it will be necessary to know what is sin 
and w r hat is not sin, and what is the element 
in our conduct that gives it character ; where 
innocence and ignorance end and responsibil- 
ity and guilt begin; what is sin and what 
merely a mistake. 

An honest man never tries to excuse him- 
self in ignorance, but always asks for the 
facts in the case, and governs himself accord- 
ingly; if therefore, we are able, by God's 
help, to bring to the reader some truth in 
this chapter which will enable one to take 
courage, and press on to better things, do not 
39 


40 


MUST WE SIN? 


refuse to see that which will ultimately be 
to your best and highest good. 

For your encouragement, then, let us start 
this discussion, by frankly admitting that 
mistakes are not sins, and sins are not mis- 
takes. It is, and always has been, a conceded 
fact that the motive back of every volitional 
act determines its character, and thus many 
serious and possibly grievous mistakes are 
made that cannot essentially be sin, because 
the motive which prompted the action was 
not of such a purpose as to give it the char- 
acter necessary to make it a sin, and can thus 
properly be nothing other than a mistake. 

God, therefore, who looks not upon the 
outward appearance but is a discerner of the 
thoughts and intents of the heart, will also 
judge His creatures accordingly; for inten- 
tion is the element in all our conduct which 
gives it character. 

It is vitally important that we should know 
what are sins and what are mistakes. The 
apostle John, as we have already seen, de- 
fines actual sin, which is the theme of our 
discussion, as being a transgression of God's 
law ; to say, therefore that we must sin, is to 


MUST WE SIN? 


41 


say we must transgress His law. Surely no 
one will insist that you must be a breaker of 
God’s commandments every day. Any indi- 
vidual who is a citizen of any nation of the 
world, and who .goes around constantly and 
blatantly bragging that he breaks the laws 
of his country every day, in thought, word 
and deed, I feel sure would soon find himself 
ostracized from decent, respectable, and law- 
abiding citizens, and be looked upon by them 
as a law breaker, an outlaw, an anarchist 
against the government of his country ; such 
an unruly individual, undoubtedly, ought to 
be in jail or in the penitentiary for the good 
of the general public. 

Did you ever hear people complaining, and 
in great distress over the fact that they were 
citizens of a certain commonwealth, and just 
could not keep from breaking the laws of 
their government, in fact had to break them 
daily in thought, word, and deed ? No ! No ! ! 
No!!! Such people cannot be found any- 
where in the world ; any man who breaks the 
laws of his country either hangs his head in 
shame or keeps the matter under cover as 
much as possible ; such an individual is never 


42 


MUST WE SIN? 


seen going around bragging about it. For 
such conduct, for such foolish talk, for such 
inconsistency, for such public acknowledg- 
ment of disregard for law and government, 
for such blatant bragging of anarchy, we 
must resort to God's kingdom and govern- 
ment, and lo, here they are in great numbers. 
“Just can't help sinning every day." What 
is sin? A transgression of God's laws. 
Therefore they are telling us, “We just can’t 
keep from breaking God's laws every day." 
Yet God says plainly His laws are not griev- 
ous. Be it said to our shame, if it is true, 
that we can be better citizens of an earthly 
commonwealth than we can of a Divine 
kingdom. If you can be an honorable, up- 
right, law abiding citizen of the United 
States, why can you not, when born again 
and made a citizen of the kingdom of God, be 
law abiding? Why must you, upon becom- 
ing a child of God, begin by disregarding dis- 
cipline and law and becoming an anarchist 
and rebel? Reader, if you are knowingly 
transgressing God's law every day, do not 
longer deceive yourself, you are not a Chris- 
tian, but a sinner, for “Whosoever is bom 


MUST WE SIN? 


43 


of God doth not commit sin.” 1 John 3 :9. 
But “Whosoever committeth sin transgress- 
eth the law, for sin is a transgression of the 
law.” 1 John 3:4. 

The reader may inquire, “Does not every- 
one sometimes do wrong?” We answer, 
“Perhaps there are none but what at times 
do err, and possibly do seriously wrong.” 
“Then are these wrongs not sins?” “They 
cannot always properly be so interpreted, be- 
cause the motive which prompted the action 
must necessarily be considered, for it is this 
that gives character to the act.” Many peo- 
ple are thus disheartened and discouraged 
under pressure of incidents in their lives, 
which they were led to believe were sins, but 
which in fact were only errors or mistakes. 
May we not discriminate between an inn<K 
cent offense and a wilful transgression? Is 
there no difference in their character? Let 
us see ; it is not misleading to say that that 
which is sin under one circumstance, may 
not be sin under another, though the act it- 
self be identically the same. Let us illus- 
trate : You, reader have a neighbor, a friend, 
who becomes violently ill in the night. You 


44 


MUST WE SIN? 


are called to his bedside to administer to his 
needs. In giving the medicine to your 
friend, by a mistake you give him the wrong 
kind ; it proves to be a deadly poison, and in 
spite of the heroic efforts of physician and 
friends, in the course of a few hours the man 
dies. He is dead. Who killed him? You 
did. You administered the fatal drug, and 
beyond all question you are alone responsible 
for his death. You are broken-hearted over 
your terrible mistake, and have the pity and 
sympathy of all who know the facts in the 
case. But are you a murderer? Are you to 
be hanged for crime? Does the Common- 
wealth arrest you and prosecute you as a 
vicious criminal? Certainly not. Why? Be- 
cause the character of the motive back of the 
act was not of a nature to make you a mur- 
derer or criminal ; it was a mistake, a serious 
one, but no person would call you a mur- 
derer. But suppose we now have the same 
thing to happen again only we reverse the 
intention. With a wicked and malicious in- 
tention you administer the same poison, 
knowing it to be poison, yet hoping to evade 
the law under the pretense that it was a 


MUST WE SIN? 


45 


mistake. You might deceive the people, and 
still retain their sympathy, you might evade 
prosecution by pretending it to be an acci- 
dent; but God, who saw the intention, and 
wicked and wilful purpose, brands you now 
as a murderer. Why? Because the purpose 
or intention in your conduct made its char- 
acter. 

We once had the same truth illustrated by 
a friend of ours, who relates the following: 
“An evangelist, living in one of the western 
states, came home for a few days’ rest be- 
tween meetings. One day, while working in 
the garden, hoeing some beans, he allowed 
his son, a little tot of perhaps three or four 
years, to play in the garden with his little 
garden tools. After hoeing all the way down 
one row T of beans, the father stopped to rest, 
and look back over his work. But now, 
imagine his surprise to find that the son had 
been hoeing also, and was cutting all the 
beans down as well as the weeds. Yet when 
he saw the father looking at him, innocently 
said, “Papa, I’se heppin too.” This was a 
serious mistake, but no wilful transgression, 
and no evil intention as is seen from the fact 


46 


MUST WE SIN? 


of his innocence and freedom from any con- 
demnation whatsoever. 

Mr. Wesley, I believe, said that sinless per- 
fection was a term he never used. He dis- 
tinguished sins from mistakes by the terms 
voluntary and involuntary sins. Far be it 
from the writer of this little volume to class 
himself with such a man, either in intellect 
or piety, or take issue with one evidently so 
far his superior; but we do feel like saying 
that we prefer to call what he calls “invol- 
untary sin,” mistakes; and offer the follow- 
ing reasons for so doing. First. All sin is 
voluntary. If involuntary action is sin, then 
the Bible is a hard book to understand, and 
seems to contradict itself in many places. We 
know that no man is infallible and, there is 
no man but what may, and, often does, invol- 
untarily transgress. If this is sin in the 
proper sense, then John is mistaken when he 
says: “Whosoever is born of God doeth no 
sin.” (R. V.) For everybody makes mis- 
takes and does therefore involuntary trans- 
gress. But involuntary action we prefer to 
call mistakes, which they properly are. If 
involuntary acts are sins, and we do all at 


MUST WE SIN? 


47 


times, perhaps involuntarily transgress, then 
we are all of the devil, God has no children 
at all, for John says that “Whosoever com- 
mitteth sin is of the devil.” Beyond doubt, 
there are none but what involuntarily trans- 
gress at times, hence the constant need of 
the atonement for involuntary and unknown 
transgressions, which in the proper sense are 
mistakes, and not of the same character as 
that sin which is known and voluntary. 
There are no doubt thousands who would not 
knowingly be disobedient to God: they love 
Him, honor Him, serve Him, and yet be- 
cause of mental incapacity or physical in- 
firmities do at times involuntarily hinder His 
purpose and will concerning them. I cannot 
believe they are sinners ; I recognize them as 
Christians, saved from their sins. Sin when 
voluntary puts us under condemnation, but 
mistakes bring not condemnation, but rather 
a consciousness of our frailty, our humanity, 
our limitations and our weaknesses, and pro- 
duce a spirit of humility, and a purpose to 
profit by our failures of the past. Again, if 
involuntary action is sin of any kind, John 
is surely mistaken when he says : “The blood 


48 


MUST WE SIN? 


of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from 
all sin for inasmuch as all are at times in- 
voluntary transgressors the blood does not 
cleanse us, as he states, from all sin. 

In discussing this question of being able to 
live above sin, we would therefore modify 
our words so as not to leave the reader under 
the impression that w r e are advocating an ab- 
solute perfection of Christian character, but 
are contending that it is the duty and privi- 
lege of every child of God to live on a plain 
above wilful and known transgression, which 
is sin. We cannot be perfect in all points, 
perhaps as Jesus, the God man. But we can 
say like Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:3), “I beseech 
thee, 0 Lord, remember now how I have 
walked before thee in truth and with a per- 
fect heart, and have done that which is good 
in thy sight.” Oh for a clear conception, and 
a definite discrimination between sins and 
mistakes. Sin is the product of our moral 
nature; mistakes are the products of our 
physical infirmities, and mental incapacities. 
Sin to be properly accounted sin is volun- 
tary, mistakes are always involuntary. Sin 
is always accompanied by condemnation and 


MUST WE SIN? 


49 


guilt; mistakes are followed by regrets, em- 
barrassment and humiliation, but never 
guilt. Sin causes us to forfeit our Divine 
fellowship and adoption, and breaks our com- 
munion with God; but a mistake does none 
of these. A man may make mistakes and 
still be justified and reconciled to God; but 
he can never sin and do so. While there is 
a distinct difference between voluntary ac- 
tion (sin) and involuntary action (mis- 
takes) , they both alike need the ever present 
and atoning blood of Jesus. 

We note that in the Old Testament provi- 
sion is made for sins of ignorance. (Lev. 
4:27, 28). “Or if his sin, which he hath 
sinned, come to his knowledge.” Exactly. 
“If it come to his knowledge,” for if there is 
no knowledge of his transgression there can 
be no intelligent offering made for it ; but if 
it come to our knowledge then we can no 
longer ignore the provision made for it. Im- 
mediately, when it comes to our knowledge 
that we have erred, we should humble our- 
selves at His feet, who taught us to pray, 
“Forgive us our trespasses.” 

But what if the offence never comes to our 


50 


MUST WE SIN? 


knowledge? In the first place, the involun- 
tary transgression, or mistake, for such it is, 
inasmuch as we have no knowledge of it, 
does not take on the character of wilful sin, 
does not produce guilt, does not mar our un- 
ion with God, all of which actual sin does. 
In the next place provision is made for all 
involuntary transgression ; we were about to 
say unconditional cleansing is provided, but 
it happens to be conditional. What is the 
condition? “If we walk in the light as he is 
in the light, we have fellowship one with an- 
other ; and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son, 
cleanseth us from all sin.” If we evade the 
light, dodge the issue, no provision is made 
for us, but to take the inevitable consequence 
of our sins. Hence, in walking in the light 
we have met the condition of constant cleans- 
ing, and the atonement avails for our invol- 
untary transgressions or mistakes which are 
the products of ignorance and not wilful 
transgression which is sin. Thus we are 
provided with a full and complete and con- 
tinual justification. The blood of Jesus Christ 
cleanseth us from all sin, actual, inherent, 
outward, inward, known and unknown, great 


MUST WE SIN? 


51 


and small, public and secret; all sin, provid- 
ed we walk in the light. Thus the constant 
need of the blood to cover our mistakes, 
blunders, and failures, which are the pro- 
duct of mental limitation and physical in- 
firmities, but not the product of an evil pur- 
pose. Reader, let not Satan defeat you by 
making you think a mistake is a sin. By all 
means, however, be careful not to label your 
sins mistakes, and thus deceive your own 
soul through dishonesty with yourself. You 
cannot deceive God, you must not deceive 
yourself. Do not therefore apologize for 
sins and call them mistakes, for God discerns 
the secret thoughts and motives of your life ; 
nothing is hid from His all-seeing eye; and 
if you lie and attempt to cover up your sins, 
and try to stifle your conscience into believ- 
ing you are innocent when you are guilty, it 
will only be the worse for you in the day of 
retribution. 

Dear soul, face the issue. “There is there- 
fore now no condemnation to them that are 
in Christ Jesus.” Rom. 8:1. Are you clear in 
your experience today? If not, get right 
with God. I am aware that in dealing with 


52 


MUST WE SIN? 


the delicate matter of an analysis of sins and 
mistakes, many dishonest souls will attempt 
to make the term '‘mistakes” a subterfuge to 
cover their sins. They might deceive the 
writer, they might deceive their nearest 
friends, and even deceive their own selves, 
but they will never deceive God, and “He 
hath appointed a day in which he will judge 
the world in righteousness, by that man 
whom he hath ordained.” Acts 17 :31. Thank 
God for a righteous judge, one who knows 
the facts in the case, and from whose knowl- 
edge nothing can be kept. He shall judge in 
righteousness, He will properly name sins, 
and rightly and justly label as mistakes the 
involuntary trespasses of those who in their 
integrity have measured up to the light and 
responsibility that Providence has allotted 
to them. 

No man, as long as he walks in the light, is 
condemned, but if he refuses light then con- 
demnation is come. John 3:19. “There is 
no condemnation,” says Paul, “to them which 
are in Christ Jesus.” Why no condemna- 
tion? Because there is no guilt. Why no 
guilt? Because there is no known trans- 


MUST WE SIN? 


53 


gression. They are measuring up to their 
light. “God is light and in Him is no dark- 
ness at all.” 1 John 1:15. Where there is 
sin in the proper sense, there is always con- 
demnation, but mistakes do not produce a 
sense of guilt, but rather a sense of regret 
and sorrow. We are not contentious about 
terms, but we feel it would be more compati- 
ble with Scripture, and give us a much clear- 
er conception of the possibilities of grace to 
speak of voluntary sin as sin, and involun- 
tary trespasses as mistakes, which in reality 
they are. 

‘Surely/' says the evangelist Chas. G. Fin- 
nery, “guilt cannot be predicated of the out- 
ward act alone, apart from intention, for if 
the outward act be not according to inten- 
tion, as in the case of accidents, we never 
think of imputing guilt, and if it be accord- 
ing to intention, we always when we act ra- 
tionally, ascribe the guilt to the intention, 
and not to the mere hand or tongue which 
became the mind's organ in its wickedness. 
This is a principle which everybody admits 
when he understands it. The thing itself is 
among the intuitive affirmations of every 


54 


MUST WE SIN? 


child’s mind. No sooner has a child the first 
idea of right or wrong, but he will excuse 
himself from blame by saying, 'That he did 
not mean to do it,’ and he knows full well 
that if this excuse is true, it is valid and good 
as an excuse; and moreover, he knows that 
you and everybody else knows and recog- 
nizes and must admit it. This thus prevades 
the minds of all men and none can intelli- 
gently deny it.” Is man more sensible than 
God? If man can recognize the righteous- 
ness of the judgment of action according to 
intention, how much more shall God, who is 
able to clearly discern the motive and inten- 
tion that precedes every act committed. 

Let us judge the actions of men, therefore, 
according to the quality of their character, 
labeling that which is sin, as such, and that 
which is properly mistakes as such, and by 
thus properly discriminating one from the 
other we will be better able to locate our- 
selves, and determine our standing in the 
realms of grace, and more definitely to lead 
souls into the proper standard of Christian 
possibilities. 

Someone might possibly object to these 


MUST WE SIN? 


55 


statements and say that we could not tell 
whether one had sinned or merely made a 
mistake. Exactly. God never made us judges 
of humanity; on the contrary, He says, 
“Judge not,” but He will safely judge all 
mankind. So that this objection is practical- 
ly of no consequence. There is no ironclad 
rule by which we can always judge the con- 
duct of our fellowmen, for we cannot always 
know the intention that prompts their con- 
duct. God alone knows this, and we doubt 
not that much that is condemned here by 
man will be approved of God in the day of 
judgment, because He fully understands the 
motive back of all our actions. While much 
that we extol will meet with condemnation 
in the eyes of a God able to discern fully the 
purpose of every individual ; gifts given, 
work accomplished, sacrifices made, rebukes 
offered, will all go for naught because they 
were not the product of righteous motives. 
That conduct which proceeds from righteous 
intention is acceptable to God, that which is 
the product of evil purposes is condemned. 
All voluntary transgression is sin , involun- 
tary transgression is properly an error or 


56 


MUST WE SIN? 


mistake. No man can voluntarily transgress 
God's law and be a Christian. All men do 
involuntarily transgress, and yet according 
to Holy Writ “do no sin." 1 John 3:9, (R. 
V.) Therefore, involuntary transgressions 
are not properly sins but mistakes. 


CHAPTER IV. 

TEMPTATIONS VS. SINS. 

We now come to another important issue 
relative to the sin question, and that is the 
matter of temptation. It is possibly safe to 
say thousands have lost their way to heaven 
on account of temptation; not that tempta- 
tion is sin, but that if we are not able to dis- 
criminate the difference it soon leads to dis- 
couragement and sin. It is not a mark of the 
absence of piety to be tempted, in fact the 
closer we live to God the more likely we are 
to suffer temptation. Many people look upon 
temptation as denoting the presence of sin 
within. This, however, is not necessarily a 
fact. Others look for the arch tempter the 
devil, in the saloon, the brothel, and places of 
disrepute, but this is also a mistake ; always, 
when we read of Satan in the Scriptures, he 
is among God's people. He went to the place 
of worship with Job and his brethren, he as- 
cended the pinnacle with Jesus, he is always 
present to hinder the work of righteousness. 

57 


58 


MUST WE SIN? 


An old man once said to the writer, “The 
devil never bothers me.” We suggested that 
possibly the reason for this was due to the 
fact that he already had him. And thus it 
is, the Christian life is a warfare; tempta- 
tions must and will be met. It is no sin to be 
tempted. If temptation is a sin, then the Sa- 
viour was a sinner, for we are told : “For we 
have not an high priest which cannot be 
touched with a feeling of our infirmities ; but 
was in all points tempted as we are , yet with- 
out sin” Heb. 4:15. Here we observe that 
Jesus was not only tempted, but was without 
sin, so that conclusively temptation is not 
sin, for while He was tempted in all points, 
He did not sin. The apostle further says, 
“Count it all joy when ye fall into divers 
temptations.” Why? “Knowing this, that 
the trying of your faith worketh patience.” 
Exactly. Temptation will work out for our 
good, but sin never does. God would never 
say, “Count it all joy when ye fall into sin.” 
It is no dishonor, therefore, nor is it an evi- 
dence of a lack of piety to be tempted. Jesus 
was tempted, and all through the Bible the 
Christian life is pictured as a conflict. Hear 


MUST WE SIN? 


59 


the apostle, “Thou, therefore, endure hard- 
ness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.” “I 
have fought a good fight, I have finished my 
course, I have kept the faith.” “Neither give 
place to the devil.” “Resist the devil and 1 he 
will flee from you.” These and many other 
like statements simply show that no state of 
piety exempts from temptation, while in a 
probationary state, and that no state of piety 
permits sinning, as is seen by 1 John 3 :8, 9. 
It is therefore safe and logical to assert that 
temptation is not sin. 

Webster says that temptation means “to 
seek, to allure, to test, etc.” Thus tempta- 
tion comes to the soul as allurements, as sug- 
gestions, as an enticing influence from the 
tempter, and never becomes sin until such 
suggestions or enticements get the consent of 
our wills to obey them. Temptations might 
be said to be standing without, knocking for 
admittance. So long as they are not counte- 
nanced, and not permitted to enter, they are 
temptations only ; but if we open the door of 
our hearts and admit them and cherish them, 
and love them, and they find a ready re- 
sponse and acceptance on our part, they are 


60 


MUST WE SIN? 


no longer temptations, they are now sins. We 
cannot prevent the devil from tempting and 
making suggestions to us, any more than we 
can prevent ice from freezing or fire from 
burning, or gravitation from drawing mat- 
ter to the earth, but we can so order our con- 
duct in life as to prevent ice freezing us, or 
fire burning us, or gravitation crushing us. 
So likewise we can order our lives so as to 
resist temptation, and escape the inevitable 
consequences of yielding to it. One writer 
has thus expressed this thought by saying, 
“We cannot stop the birds from flying over 
our heads, but we can prevent them from 
making nests in our hair. ,, The thought is 
simply that we have no way of preventing 
the temptation from coming, but that we do 
have power to resist and overcome. And 
thus when temptation comes, it is not sin; 
only when you yield yourself to obey. 

Says Hannah Whitall Smith: “If we fail 
to recognize the truth about temptation, it 
will be impossible to prevent our being dis- 
couraged. The Bible says: ‘Blessed is the 
man that endureth temptation.' Temptation, 
therefore, cannot be sin ; and the truth is, it 


MUST WE SIN? 


61 


is no more sin to hear these whispers and 
suggestions of evil in our souls than it is for 
us to hear the wicked talk of bad men as we 
pass along the street. The sin in either case 
comes only by our stopping and joining in 
with them. If when wicked suggestions 
come, we turn from them at once, as we 
would from wicked talk, and pay no more at- 
tention to them than we would to the talk, we 
do not sin. But if we carry them on in our 
minds and roll them under our tongues, and 
dwell on them with a half consent of our will 
to them as true, then we sin. We may be en- 
ticed by temptations a thousand times a day 
without sin.” 

So it is, thousands, disheartened and dis- 
couraged because they are tempted, are led 
into darkness by the tempter, and are made 
to believe they are sinners, or they would not 
have had such thoughts, when really such 
thoughts right then are repulsive to them, 
and find no sympathy or accord in their 
hearts ; but Satan is thrusting these temp- 
tations upon them, against their own better 
self. Temptations are the devil’s children, 
whom he is seeking to have you adopt; he 


62 


MUST WE SIN? 


brings them to you, but thank God, you need 
not adopt them and take them in. No man, 
when he is tempted, is a sinner ; he only be- 
comes a sinner in the degree that he cher- 
ishes, harbors and obeys the evil suggestions. 

While it is a fact that temptation is not sin 
in itself, it often proves to be the path which 
leads into sin; though we can triumph 
through all our temptations, yet we are often 
defeated because we wilfully walk into them. 
Jesus taught us to pray: “Lead us not into 
temptation,” but in spite of this many pro- 
fessing Christians keep company with, and 
go places with people when they are con- 
scious beforehand that they are destined to 
throw themselves into the lap of temptation. 
We need not expect the help of God to over- 
come temptation when we deliberately disre- 
gard the injunction of His prayer, and walk 
with open eyes into the clutches of tempta- 
tion. It is the purpose of God never to per- 
mit us to be tempted above that which we 
are able to bear, as is seen in 1 Cor. 10:13. 
But when we deliberately walk into question- 
able places and put ourselves where we can 
the more easily be tempted, we need not ex- 


MUST WE SIN? 


63 


pect God to verify His promise, “to make a 
way of escape that we may be able to bear 
it.” When we disregard the scriptural pray- 
er, “Lead us not into temptation,” then we 
forfeit the promise of God “to deliver us 
from evil.” If temptation must come, do not 
let it be said, reader, that you sought it, but 
if it seeks you, God will not suffer you to be 
tempted above that ye are able, and will also, 
with every temptation, make a way of escape. 

Let not Satan, therefore, discourage and 
hinder your progress in the Divine life, by 
labeling your temptations sins. They are 
not such, and never can be, until you have 
consented to yield in obedience to them. 

The volitional element in man’s nature 
alone can make him responsible for his con- 
duct; and while Satan may entice, persuade 
and even harass those whom he seeks to de- 
feat and drag back into sin, yet none of his 
allurements are ever sin until they first meet 
with your sanction and approval, and get the 
consent of your will to put them into prac- 
tice. 

A beautiful and striking illustration of 
this fact was given in the writer’s presence 


64 


MUST WE SIN? 


recently at a camp meeting, by the Rev. E. E. 
S'helhamer, who said in substance: “A lady 
enters a dry goods store to purchase some 
dress goods; there are hundreds of bolts of 
goods on the shelves. As she enters a clerk 
comes forward to wait upon her. He pro- 
ceeds to take down the different qualities at 
different prices, and after spreading many 
bolts of goods on the counter, the lady may 
decide that none of them is what she wants. 
Very well. Up to this time the looking and 
pricing of the various kinds of material have 
cost her nothing ; she is under no obligation 
to the clerk or the firm, for she has not yet 
decided to take any of them. Her choice in 
this matter is a personal right and a voli- 
tional privilege, and she incurs no responsi- 
bility until she has first exercised these priv- 
ileges. It is the clerk’s business to show the 
goods whether the customer buys or not ; she 
has, therefore, incurred no responsibility, 
and is out nothing for her venture up to this 
time. But suppose, after looking over the 
various qualities of material and comparing 
the prices one with another, addressing the 
clerk, she says: Til take so many yards of 


MUST WE SIN? 


65 


this/ As soon as the decision is made the 
clerk cuts the cloth and the customer is un- 
der obligation to take the goods, and is thus 
responsible for her own decision ; according- 
ly she must pay for the goods. When deci- 
sion is made then responsibility is also 
made.” 

The application is obvious ; the devil may 
peddle his wares and display his goods all he 
likes; he may get from the topmost shelves 
his choicest wares (temptations), but so long 
as you decide to take none of them they are 
still his property. Thank God! You have 
incurred no guilt, you are under no obliga- 
tions to him, and you have not sinned until 
these temptations have gained the consent 
of your will to cherish, accept and indulge in 
them and to put them into practice. No, 
temptation is not sin. It is never sin to be 
tempted, but always sin when we yield. 


CHAPTER V. 

MUST WE SIN? 

The preceding pages of this book have 
been given to a discussion of the origin and 
nature of sin, sins and mistakes, and tempta- 
tions and sins. We are now ready, with a 
proper conception of sin, to investigate the 
matter of whether or not we must sin. Let 
the reader keep in mind that we are using 
the term sin in the actual sense, as defined 
by John in his first epistle, third chapter, and 
fourth verse. “Sin is the transgression of 
the law.” Perhaps there is nothing in the 
realm of Christendom that offers so much 
contention as the question of whether or not 
it is possible to live above sin. The great 
bulk of professing Christians laugh at the 
idea of being saved and kept from sin ; and 
thus the standard of Christian living is low- 
ered, until a Christian is nothing more than 
a sinner who identifies himself with the 
Church. Many openly contend that to be 
saved from sin is simply out of the question ; 

66 


MUST WE SIN? 


67 


that we must sin, more or less, every day, in 
thought, word and deed. A lady who was a 
member of an orthodox church, once said to 
the writer : “I sin every breath I draw to 
which we should have replied that she need 
not worry about the future ; her destiny was 
already settled ; her title to mansions in the 
skies was assured, for unconditional salva- 
tion is provided in the Scriptures for infants 
and idiots. The fact that a person in a land 
of Bibles and gospel sermons, and opportuni- 
ties, should know so little about Jesus and 
His power to save, only advertises the indif- 
ference, indolence and possibly ignorance on 
the part of both pulpit and pew to look into 
this matter ; especially the failure of the pul- 
pit to preach Christ as an adequate and all- 
sufficient Saviour. Such ignorance and in- 
difference is doomed to an awful awakening 
and a more awful reckoning in the day of 
judgment. 

There is nothing that so stirs a backslid- 
den church, a formal pulpit, and the devil 
himself, as when the death knell of sin is 
sounded. Shame to the ambassador of 
Christ, whether in the pulpit or pew, that 


68 


MUST WE SIN? 


would betray his Lord by denying His power 
to save fully and completely ; and would low- 
er the standard of Christian living till there 
is no distinction to be made between a Chris- 
tian and a sinner, except that one has his 
name enrolled on the church register, and 
the other has not ; or that one is a church sin- 
ner, and the other a sinner outright. 

In this chapter we wish to investigate the 
possibility of a victorious life over sin, from 
the standpoint of reason, and will reserve 
another chapter in which to produce the 
scriptural conclusions. We say in answer to 
the question, “Must we sin?” No, absolutely 
no; and offer as our first proof the nature 
and constitution of man. We are told that 
God made man in His own image, and en- 
dowed him with certain capacities, among 
which was the power to choose his own 
course, his volitional character. It is not too 
much to say that God has so marvelously en- 
dowed him as to lift him above the laws of 
force. Hence we often say, “God cannot 
save a sinner who will not be saved.” Al- 
though it may be said rightly that God rea- 
sons with him, God pities him, God threatens 


MUST WE SIN? 


69 


him, God commands him, yet God never 
compels him. Why? Because this would de- 
stroy his volitional nature, and make him by 
compulsion, obedient to God without any 
choice in the matter whatever. Wonderful 
it is, indeed, that God should so constitute 
man as to put his destiny in his own hands, 
yet this is exactly what He has done. Of 
course, if it were only a matter of power, 
God could do many things which He does 
not. God could have threaded the country 
with railroads as well as rivers. He could 
have caused houses all furnished, to spring 
up out of the ground, as well as He could 
have caused trees to grow. He could have 
caused a nice, well-baked loaf of bread to 
grow on a wheat straw as well as the grain, 
that is, if it were merely a matter of power. 
But does He do these things? Never! Why? 
Because it is not according to His Divine 
plan. If it were merely a matter of physi- 
cal power, we doubt not that God could pick 
up an individual and shake the dirt and the 
devil out of him, and compel him to live like 
a saint. He could take that great crowd of 
Sabbath desecraters, who are forgetting God 


70 


MUST WE SIN? 


in their mad anxiety for pleasure, and 
spending their Sabbaths in revelry and 
frolic, and bring them into the house of God 
to honor and worship Him. But this is not 
God’s plan ; for in so doing He would destroy 
man’s volition, as well as His own purpose 
and plan. It is a fact that men are not made 
Christians by compulsion, or forced into obe- 
dience to Almighty God. It is also a fact that 
men are not made sinners by compulsion; 
for this, in like manner, would destroy man’s 
volitional nature, and defeat God’s purpose 
and plan. A man is never a Christian, or 
a sinner either, by compulsion; his volitional 
endowment, which is fundamentally a part 
of his nature would necessarily have to be 
destroyed, and he would have no choice in 
the matter if compelled to serve God or the 
devil. To say we have to sin is to deny and 
disregard the basic principle of our creation, 
which is free moral agency, or volition. If 
we must sin, we are not volitional creatures, 
and have no choice as to our conduct, but are 
compulsorily servants of sin. “For to whom 
ye yield yourselves, servants to obey, his 
servants ye are to whom ye obey.” (Rom. 


MUST WE SIN? 


71 


6:16). If we are compelled, therefore, to 
yield ourselves servants to sin, and be sub- 
ject to Satan’s power, insomuch that we 
cannot help but obey him, and really have no 
choice in the matter, then is our free agency, 
our volition, destroyed ; and to make matters 
worse, the devil has more power than God. 
Satan can make us disobey God, but alas, 
God cannot make us disobey Satan. The 
devil compels us to be sinners, but God can- 
not compel us to be righteous. What kind 
of a doctrine is this ? 

Is it possible that a good God who hates 
sin has so created us, that we can resist Him, 
and cannot resist the devil? The Word says: 
“My Spirit shall not always strive with 
man.” There could be no strife unless man 
possessed power to resist. How unreasonar 
ble to think that God as our Creator, should 
so endow us as to be capable of resisting 
Him, and yet unable to resist Satan. If this 
is our dilemma, then He who thus made us is 
to blame for our predicament, for He has 
given us all the capacities we possess, and in 
thus creating us with power to thwart His 
purpose and plan, and no power to thwart 


/ 


72 MUST WE SIN? 

the purpose and plan of Satan, we are left 
hopelessly at the mercy of the devil. Is it a 
fact that He has endowed us with volitional 
qualities in regard to righteousness, and de- 
nied us volitional qualities in regard to sin? 
In a word, God made us all helplessly sin- 
ners, with no choice in the matter? What 
nonsense. The facts in the case are that 
neither God nor the devil can compel us to 
do either right or wrong, unless our free 
agency and right of choice be first destroyed. 
So long as we possess these fundamental and 
basic qualities in our natures, which are pri- 
marily God-given to every person, we have 
it absolutely in our own power to do right or 
wrong, to sin or not to sin, according as we 
will. The will is the pivot upon which all 
volitional action moves. I will to walk, and 
I walk; I will to talk, and I talk; I can be a 
Christian if I will, or I can be a sinner if I 
will ; I can go to heaven if I will, or I can go 
to hell if I will. Our wills thus enable us to 
execute our choice. Hence, the Scriptural in- 
junction, “Choose ye this day whom ye will 
serve.” Both the choice and the will are here 
urged into action. But why urge a choice, if 


MUST WE SIN? 


73 


in reality we are servants of sin, and have no 
choice, but to do its bidding?” “How long 
halt ye between two opinions?” says the 
prophet. “If the Lord be God, follow him; 
if Baal, follow him.” This is strange lan- 
guage indeed, to address to creatures who 
really had no choice in the matter, and could 
do nothing other than to follow Baal. 

Says an able writer on this subject: “God 
is physically omnipotent, and yet His moral 
influences exerted by the Spirit may be re- 
sisted. You will readily see that if the Spirit 
moved men by physical omnipotence, no mor- 
tal could possibly resist His influence. But 
now we know it to be a fact that man can re- 
sist the Holy Ghost, for the nature of moral 
agency implies this and the Bible asserts it. 
Hence, if our action is that of moral agents, 
our moral freedom to do or not do must re- 
main. It cannot be set aside or in any way 
overruled. If God should in any way set 
aside our voluntary agency He would of 
necessity terminate at once our moral and 
responsible action. Force and moral agency 
are terms of opposite meaning. They can- 
not both co-exist.” 


74 


MUST WE SIN? 


It would be useless to assume that man 
had any responsibility, unless he was capable 
of controlling his own actions. If God should 
make men obey Him by force, obedience 
would cease to merit reward ; likewise if the 
devil has it in his power to force men to 
obey him and disobey God, this disobedience 
could not rightly be punished, seeing the 
man is not responsible for his own conduct, 
but was made disobedient by compulsion. 
Can Satan compel men to serve him against 
their will? No. As men must serve God by 
choice, so they must likewise serve Satan 
from the same reason. All who are sinners 
are so by choice ; no man sins unless he first 
desires to do so, and no man is ever com- 
pelled to sin . 

We cannot conceive of God as an intelli- 
gent, allwise and infinite Creator, issuing a 
code of laws to be obeyed by His creatures, 
when He knew they had neither the purpose, 
power nor possibility to obey them ; but were 
compelled of necessity, to disregard and dis- 
obey them every day, in thought, word and 
deed. Most assuredly, when God issued His 
commandments concerning the conduct of 


MUST WE SIN? 


75 


His creatures in His own infinite wisdom He 
knew they were capable of conforming to 
every requirement, as well as being able to 
disobey and disregard them all. If sin, or 
virtue either, were otherwise than volitional 
it would cease to deserve punishment or 
merit reward. 

We are not machines to be manipulated 
at the discretion of another. No sensible 
man can charge God with his sin and folly, 
nor can he shift the responsibility for his un- 
holy deeds entirely upon the devil, for it is 
not in his power to make us sin against our 
wills any more than it is possible for God to 
make us righteous against our wills. Satan 
may entice us, tempt us, persecute us; but 
he can never compel us to sin ; in fact, we are 
told : “Resist the devil and he will flee from 
you.” And God further says: “There hath 
no temptation taken you, but such as is com- 
mon to man; but God is faithful, who will 
not suffer you to be tempted above that ye 
are able; but will, with the temptation, also 
make a way of escape, that ye may be able 
to bear it.” (1 Cor. 10:13). 

The right of choice and volitional charac- 


76 


MUST WE SIN? 


ter may be illustrated by the following expe- 
rience of the writer: While making a tour 
of Florida, we chanced to be one day on our 
way over to the old Suwanee river. We 
crossed another small river whose waters 
were crystal clear. We could see the bottom 
of the stream all the way across; also the 
fish as they moved lazily about from place to 
place. We attempted to catch these fish with 
a hook and line. Being able to see where 
they were, we had no trouble after baiting 
the hook, in dropping it down right among 
them ; but to our disappointment, after play- 
ing the bait before them, and following them 
from place to place for sometime, we finally 
gave up the task in disgust, thoroughly con- 
vinced that all further effort was useless. 
Thus it is with mankind; Satan may and 
does tempt everybody, but while he may play 
the bait before us, he cannot compel us to 
swallow the hook. He never catches or con- 
quers a soul until it first of its own volition, 
yields to the tempter's snare. No soul is de- 
feated, no spiritual fort ever surrenders, sin 
and Satan are never victorious until we first 
wilfully yield ourselves servants to sin. 


MUST WE SIN? 


77 


“How can two walk together/’ asks the 
prophet, “except they be agreed?” What 
two? God and you. How agreed? In moral 
character. God says in His book, “Be ye 
holy.” Why? “For I am holy.” Bear in 
mind, reader, if you walk with God, you 
must walk where God walks. God has no 
intention, whatever, of leaving His path of 
holiness, to come down and walk with you in 
sin. He will not surrender His character to 
be in harmony with you, but if you would 
walk with Him, you must make your life cor- 
respond with His Divine requirements. 
Hence, he says, “Like as he which hath 
called you is holy, so be ye holy in all man- 
ner of living.” (R. V.) Why? So that God 
and you may be agreed and walk together in 
harmony. God never walks with sinners,, 
that is, to be in harmony and sweet fellow- 
ship with them, for He is angry with the 
wicked every day . To say that we must sin, 
therefore, means either that God is recon- 
ciled to us in our sins, or else He is never 
reconciled to us at all. Is it possible that an 
infinite, intelligent God has issued a code of 
laws and governmental principles that His 


78 


MUST WE SIN? 


creatures cannot possibly observe and obey? 
If so, then we who disregard and disobey 
them are not responsible; but God Himself 
is directly responsible for all our failures 
and sins, in that He has put the standard so 
high as to be utterly impossible for us to 
reach. He has issued laws that we cannot 
keep. What nonsense! The very fact that 
sin brings condemnation, proves conclusively 
that it is volitional and could have been 
avoided. No one is ever under condemnation 
for failing to do the impossible; only that 
which is within the realm of possibility can 
produce condemnation. Hence, every sinner 
is under condemnation, because sin is voli- 
tional and not compulsory. 

“But,” says the objector: “All that yon say 
concerning the will and volition is true, yet 
While it is a fact that when we are converted 
our wills are brought into subjection to 
God's Divine will, we must not overlook the 
fact that we are not yet glorified, and are 
still living in these old sinful bodies, and that 
while we are in the body, we just must sin.” 
Well, let us see. We have always thought 
that the body was subject to the soul, and 


MUST WE SIN? 


79 


not the soul to the body. But let us investi- 
gate the matter without prejudice. If the 
body does the sinning after we are converted 
what did it before? Was it the body then? 
If so, we need no redemption for the soul at 
all, but rather body redemption, for the soul 
is not the sinner, but the body ; in which case 
the soul need not be converted, need not re- 
pent, needs not the blood of Christ, for 
Christ died for sinners ; hence, the conclusion 
of the whole matter is simply that Christ 
died for bodies and not souls at all. But how 
does this compare with the “Thus saith the 
Lord ?” “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” 
“Fear not them which kill the body, but are 
not able to kill the soul, but rather fear him 
which is able to destroy both soul and body 
in hell.” “What shall it profit a man if he 
shall gain the whole world and lose his own 
soul?” and many others. Such a doctrine is 
bordering on sacrilege, for it is equivalent 
to saying our Saviour was a sinner. In fact 
if sin is in the body, then Jesus was a sinner, 
for He had a body like ours. 

In one of Mr. Finney's books, he has the 
following to say in regard to sin being in the 


80 


MUST WE SIN? 


body : “Sin is not only the violation of moral 
law, but the voluntary violation of moral 
law. This implies that the sinning subject 
must know the law, and that its violations 
must be a matter of choice — otherwise the 
subject incurs no guilt, and is not liable to 
the infliction of penalty. If the subject who 
sins must know the law, its violation must 
be voluntary, or it does not incur the guilt 
of sin — the subject must be intelligent and 
intelligence belongs not to matter, or body, 
but belongs to spirit. Now the body not be- 
ing a party to the relations out of which 
moral law arises, and not being intelligent, 
cannot of itself be under the authority of 
moral law, and cannot sin.” 

Sin is never located in matter; sin i# 
strictly a malady of the soul, although the 
body has suffered the consequences of a sin- 
ful soul within. If sin were a body malady, 
an expert surgeon might locate and remove 
it ; if sin is in the body, then to lose an arm 
or a limb, or any portion of the body would 
simply mean that our sinfulness had de- 
creased accordingly. A catastrophe in which 
we lose a part of our body, in this case, 


MUST WE SIN? 


81 


should be looked upon as a providential bless- 
ing from the hand of the Almighty, for it 
has reduced our sinfulness. If our measure 
of sin be according to avoirdupois, then a 
small man is slightly a sinner, while a two 
hundred pounder would be as mean as the 
devil. We have often heard the expression, 
“Nobody loves a fat man.” Perhaps this is 
the solution to the mystery. If sin is in the 
body, what we want is not soul cleansing but 
body reduction ; not the blood of Christ, but 
a good dose of anti-fat. According to this 
hypothesis, a one-armed, one-legged, tooth- 
less, bald-headed man has almost reached 
Christian perfection. 

We once asked a physician, a university 
graduate, a man famJiliar with all the parts 
of human anatomy, if he had ever discovered 
sin anywhere in any part of the body. It is 
needless to say that he had never been able 
to locate sin anywhere in any part of the 
body. The reason is obvious : it is not there. 

We are told by the Apostle Paul that “Ev- 
ery sin that a man doeth is without the 
body.” (1 Cor. 6:18). Exactly. The body 
can never sin unless made to do so by the 


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soul dwelling within. The body is merely the 
house in which the soul lives. You might 
as well talk about the suit of clothes a man 
wears committing sin, as the body. The body 
is only the temple of clay in which the soul- 
man dwells. You might as well arrest the 
house in which the thief lives for the thief's 
conduct, as to blame the body for the conduct 
of the soul. The body is merely the tool, or 
organ which the soul uses to carry out its 
purposes. When the soul-man moves out 
(which is the controlling power of the body) , 
the body is no longer capable of action. Did 
you ever hear a corpse swear? Did you ever 
know a dead man to steal? Certainly not. 
Why? Because the man, the swearer, and 
dishonest soul has left the helpless temple of 
clay behind ; it, of itself, is unable to act in 
any capacity; he who dwelt within and con- 
trolled, and was responsible for its actions 
has departed. When filthy habits, habits of 
intemperance, habits of uncleanness, are 
manifest through the instrumentality of the 
body, it is only an announcement of the fact 
that a dirty individual resides within. A 
house is never any cleaner than its tenants. 


MUST WE SIN? 


83 


If you go into a man's house and find it filthy 
and unclean you certainly do not blame the 
house, but rather the parties who live there. 
They are responsible for its unkept and filthy 
condition. I see an old man going down the 
street, his mouth and beard all stained with 
tobacco spittle, his face dirty, his finger nails 
uncared for, his hair uncombed; or worse 
yet, a young man, a dirty, nasty, ill-smelling 
cigarette in his mouth, blowing his second- 
hand smoke from between his rotten teeth 
and out of his dirty nose into the faces of all 
that are within his proximity. Do I blame the 
body? No ; in my heart I pity the poor body, 
so poisoned and degraded and made a help- 
less tool of the depraved appetites of the dirty 
sinner that is living on the inside. 

But if sin were in the flesh, (that is the 
body) the Book expressly says Christ came 
to condemn sin in the flesh; not that sin, 
however, is literally in, or a part of the body, 
but rather that he came to condemn sin that 
dwells in the soul dwelling in the body. That 
flesh, in the scripture, does not always essen- 
tially mean the physical body is seen by 
Paul's statement to the Romans, “For ye are 


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not in the flesh but in the Spirit.” Rom. 
8:9. Here the apostle did not mean to say 
they were not in their bodies (because they 
were) but uses the term flesh here to denote 
the natural, or rather the absence of the 
spiritual. “What,” says Paul, “know ye not 
that your body is the temple of the Holy 
Ghost?” If the body is His temple he surely 
ought to have control of His own house, and 
not suffer it to be ruled by another contrary 
to His desires. It is true that the body has 
suffered and does suffer as a result of sin, 
and that redemption and restoration are pro- 
vided for it in God's great plan. But the 
body is not volitional, nor responsible; it is 
subject to the powers of the soul. But 
thanks be unto God, He has given us, in His 
Son Jesus Christ, a redemption that is ade- 
quate to the needs of both body and soul. 

Says M. W. Knapp in his little tract, en- 
titled “Sin in the Flesh:” “We are expressly 
commanded to glorify God in our bodies 
which are His. 1 Cor. 6:20. Does it glorify 
God for His temple to be turned into a filthy 
tobacco smoke-house or squirt-gun, or whis- 
key barrel, or wine cask, or beer keg? Does 


MUST WE SIN? 


85 


it glorify Him for it to be polluted with un- 
clean lusts and secret sins? Does it glorify 
Him to be seen at the dance, the card table, 
the theatre, the race course, the circus ? If 
the Spirit of Jesus is in the heart, His life 
will control the body and overflow in the glad 
use of all its powers, leaving no room for Sa- 
tan’s damning doctrine of sin in the flesh. 
Woe unto all who seek to substitute sin in the 
flesh for Jesus manifest there!” 

Paul plainly recognizes the difference in 
dealing with sin as a soul malady, and in 
dealing with the infirmities of the human 
body. Concerning the body and its infirmi- 
ties, he says, “I keep under my body and 
bring it into subjection.” But he never re- 
fers to sin in any such manner. He never 
says, “I keep under sin, or bring it into sub- 
jection.’ Why? Because this is not God’s 
plan in dealing with sin. Our human nature 
is brought into subjection to the will of God, 
but the carnal mind is enmity against God. 
Hence, the only provision for it is its com- 
plete extermination, eradication, (1 John 
1:7), its crucifixion, (Rom. 6:6). It is inex- 
cusably ignorant for one to teach, as some do 


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in these days, that no one can live without 
committing sin every day, or worse yet, that 
we must sin to keep humble. No wonder 
that saving souls is thrice as difficult as 
damning them. Many pulpits are teaching 
that you cannot be saved from your sins, but 
must sin a little every day. If the object of 
the church is to provide a hospital for inva- 
lids or a covering for scoundrels, then this 
doctrine is a success and consistent; but if 
the object of the church is to glorify God, 
and its mission is to save men, then it is a 
false doctrine, is a lie, and ought to be ban- 
ished back to the hell from whence it came. 
No man, who is called of God, and has the 
anointing of the Holy One upon him, will 
ever preach a sinning religion. The man 
who preaches a sinning religion has either 
never been called to the ministry or else is 
backslidden from his calling and is a traitor 
to his trust. 

If I were a sinner, unsaved, unconverted, 
and a preacher should ask me to accept 
Christ as my Saviour, and then tell me that 
no one could live without sin, (that is to 
say, the Christ he is asking me to receive, 


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87 


and who died to save sinners, is unable to 
save us from sinning,) I must admit it would 
be foolish for me to accept Him for a pur- 
pose for which He is inadequate. I would re- 
pudiate Him as a failure if He came to save 
me from my sins, and then was unable to do 
so. Thousands are rejecting Him today be- 
cause He is not held up to them as an effic- 
ient and sufficient Saviour ; and be it said to 
the shame of those who are posing as His 
ambassadors, that the blame for this is due 
to the powerless, compromising, inadequate 
type of Christianity which disgraces rather 
than exalts Him as a Saviour from sin. The 
very first promise in the New Testament con- 
cerning Jesus Christ is, ‘‘She shall bring 
forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Je- 
sus, for he shall save his people from their 
sins.” If He cannot save us from our sins, 
He is a failure, His death is in vain, His mis- 
sion defeated. I, for one, prefer to be a sin- 
ner, if I must sin, without a religious pro- 
fession, and thus avoid adding the sin of 
hypocrisy to my other sins. 

The devil has no better representatives in 
this world than those who advocate a sinning 


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religion; ministers of Satan are they, who 
pose as the ministers of righteousness, but 
whose end shall be according to their works. 
(2 Cor. 11:14, 15.) It is mysterious indeed, 
that anyone should contend that sin is a nec- 
essary element in making us humble. 

•‘We notice in a reputable religious paper 
of one of the leading denominations, ” says 
the Editor of the Herald of Holiness , “The 
following sentence: ‘It never occurred to 
Paul to profess complete sanctification/ 
Also, ‘the holiest and saintliest are most con- 
scious of their sins and shortcomings be- 
fore God/ We would like to know what kind 
of friendly offices sins and shortcomings 
perform in getting people closer to God. 
Where in the Bible are we told that sins and 
shortcomings are saviors to help us closer to 
God? We have always been taught that sin 
separated us from God, in the first instance 
of its history, and that its tragic record had 
been always divisive, and trended us away 
from God, and brought us under condemnar 
tion, instead of bringing us closer to God. By 
what sort of jugglery of words and legerde- 
main of thought does our brother manage to 


MUST WE SIN? 


89 


contradict the whole trend of Bible teaching, 
and the whole nature and design and philoso- 
phy of the atonement, and make sin a helper 
in bringing men into the holiest and saint- 
liest relations to God?" 

We would further comment on the broth- 
er's article, and say, that if it is a fact that 
sin is an essential quality in making us hum- 
ble, it is only logical to say that a little sin 
would make us a little humble, but more sin 
would make us more humble, so the devil 
would be the most humble of us all. Such 
nonsense! Surely such preaching and such 
articles are not well weighed ; they are not 
the product of earnest, careful and prayer- 
ful consideration. It seems to the writer 
that if the reader has succeeded in reading 
the first chapter only of the New Testament, 
he can see the object of Christ's mission to 
the world, — “He shall save his people from 
their sins" (Matt. 1:12), not save them in 
them, or with them, or in spite of them, but 
from, them . Strange it is, indeed, that the 
average man will read this promise and a 
multitude of other promises, equally as clear, 
close the book, and contend for all he is 


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worth that we can’t be saved from our sins ; 
and worse yet, this same man will be insulted 
if you class him with the infidel, yet this is 
exactly what he is — an unbeliever, sailing 
under the colors of Christianity, for he de- 
nies the purpose and power of the Gospel to 
save the people from their sins. 

It is not unfair to say that a man who ad- 
vocates that we cannot be saved from all sin 
in this life puts himself under suspicion, and 
is unworthy of the confidence of his neigh- 
bors. Why? Because if it is true that God 
cannot save him from all the sin, how do we 
know which sin it is that God cannot save 
him from ? It might be dishonesty ; if so, we 
cannot afford to trust him far ; or it might be 
lust ; if so, we do not care to be in company 
with libertines; or it might be lying; if so 
you can put no confidence in his word, and 
thus he covers himself with suspicion by his 
infidelity. Surely this is not the picture of a 
New Testament Christian. 

Perhaps it is a fact that God can save us 
from our grosser sins, but not the lesser. Let 
us see. If a man yields to a slight tempta- 
tion to commit what he calls a little sin, it 


MUST WE SIN? 


91 


cannot be a regard for God that keeps him 
from yielding to greater temptation and 
committing greater sins; for the same re- 
gard and reverence that kept him from great 
sins, would also keep him from small ones. 
The right regard and reverence for God will 
keep a man from all sin ; he will be as careful 
not to desecrate God's holy day, or to take 
His name in vain, as he is not to steal or 
commit adultery. Why? Because the same 
God who has said, “Thou shalt not commit 
adultery," has also said, “Remember the 
Sabbath day to keep it holy" (Ex. 20:8); 
the same God who has said, “Thou shalt not 
steal," has also said, “Thou shalt not take 
the name of the Lord thy God in vain, for 
the Lord will not hold him guiltless that tak- 
eth his name in vain." (Ex. 20:7). Love 
for God, and proper reverence for His will, 
will cause you to respect and obey one com- 
mandment as well as another. If you do not 
love God enough to abstain from small sins, 
you do not love Him well enough to abstain 
from greater ones. True, you may not in- 
dulge in grosser sins, but it is not your love 
and reverence for God that prevent it. Very 


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likely you abstain from them for various 
other reasons, such as self respect, fear of 
punishment, and so on. 

Be that as it may, the unrepented sin, 
whether great or small, is the unforgiven 
sin; and the unforgiven sin must meet its 
inevitable consequences. Hence, James says, 
“For whosoever shall keep the whole law and 
yet offend in one point is guilty of all.” ( Jas. 
2:10). Not that in offending in one point, 
he has actually committed all the sins in the 
decalogue, but that in offending at all he has 
missed the mark of obedience, and upon obe- 
dience to God hinges our justification. You 
need not break every commandment to make 
you a sinner; to indulge in one known and 
wilful sin is enough to forfeit your justifica- 
tion and reconciliation to God. 

For illustration: I am crossing a large 
meadow, surrounded by a long fence, con- 
taining two hundred panels. When about 
half way across I am pursued by an old ram. 
I make for the fence at top speed, with the 
pursuer close behind. When I reach the 
fence, it is needless to tell the reader that I 
do not have to jump all the two hundred 


MUST WE SIN? 


93 


panels to put me out of the meadow. Thank- 
ful am I, indeed, that to clear one panel is all 
that is necessary to elude my pursuer, and 
put me out of the path of danger. The ap- 
plication is obvious ; a man need not commit 
all the sins revealed in the Bible to make 
him a sinner. One known and unforgiven 
sin will break his fellowship with God. 

As we often say, a chain is never any 
stronger than its weakest link. Why so? 
Because one link broken is sufficient to pre- 
vent its fulfilling its purpose. A fierce bull 
dog is chained to his kennel, when along 
comes Mr. Thomas Cat. Does the dog have 
to break every link in the chain to get loose ? 
Certainly not. One link broken is sufficient 
to make the fur fly. Dear reader, do not 
think you must be a great sinner to be 
damned. It may be that there are those in 
hell now whose sins are less than yours. One 
voluntary, known and wilful transgression, 
unrepented of, and unforgiven, will prove 
enough to settle your destiny. The gravity 
of one sin is seen in that it has produced 
death on the entire race. (Rom. 5:12). 

But what is a sinner? We call a man who 


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sings a singer. Why? Because he sings. 
We call a man who preaches a preacher. 
Why? Because he preaches. We call a man 
who paints a painter. Why? Because he 
paints. We call a person who sins a sinner. 
Why? Because he sins. But suppose he is a 
Methodist? Then he is simply a Methodist 
sinner ; or if a Baptist, only a Baptist sinner ; 
and let it be known to the reader here and 
now that church sinners are not exempted 
from the inevitable consequences, but share 
a like fate with common sinners, in that for 
all alike, “The wages of sin is death.” (Rom. 
6:23). 

Our identification and identity are estab- 
lished by John in his first epistle, in which 
the line of demarkation is definitely drawn, 
“He that committeth sin is of the devil.” 
(1 John 3:8). “Whosoever is born of God 
doth not commit sin.” (1 John 3:9). “In 
this the children of God are manifest, and the 
children of the devil.” (1 John 3:10). In 
what? In that one crowd sins and the other 
does not. There are many people who seem 
to think that because they were once convert- 
ed, and are now members of the church, in 


MUST WE SIN? 


95 


good standing, that their sins are overlooked 
and not counted against them; or, in other 
words, church-membership and a religious 
profession exonerate them from further re- 
sponsibility. 

Well, if a converted man can sin and re- 
tain the Divine favor, then may not an un- 
converted man do the same? If not, God is 
making an unjust and unfair distinction, 
which is contrary to the word of God. (Col. 
3:25). One of two things is certain, either 
God can or He cannot save us from our sins. 
If He can, then no man can be reconciled to 
Him until he is thus saved. If He cannot, 
then we can never be reconciled to Him at 
all, unless we are reconciled while we are yet 
in our sins. If this is true, then the whole 
thing culminates in the fact that the only 
difference between a sinner and a Christian 
is that the converted man is a Christian sin- 
ner, and the other just a common trans- 
gressor. What a travesty on the purpose 
and power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. If 
God cannot save us from all sin, then He has 
not all power, but if He can and will not, 
then He tolerates sin in us as a matter of His 


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own choice ; and He, instead of us, is respon- 
sible for our sins, in that He alone can save 
us and yet refuses to do so. 

It is remarkable to see to what extremes 
people will go in order to avoid the issue, and 
actually be saved from their sins. One 
crowd intimates that a Christian cannot sin, 
the other that he cannot keep from sinning. 
Both of these views are far-fetched, unrea- 
sonable, and unscriptural. The first class, 
who would advocate the impossibility of sin, 
base their argument on 1 John 3:9, “cannot 
sin because he is born of God.” But it is not 
compatible with common sense, experience, 
or revelation, to make this an infallible “can- 
not we know that anyone can sin, if he so 
desires. The “cannot” in the text is a moral 
cannot rather than an infallible cannot, and 
implies that you cannot sin and be born of 
God, because sin breaks your fellowship with 
God, and forfeits your Divine adoption. You 
can no more sin and be a Christian than you 
can steal and be honest, drink and be sober, 
or lie and be truthful. The great majori- 
ty of people, however take the other side of 
the sin question, and insist that we must sin , 


MUST WE SIN? 


97 


and thus repudiate both the purpose and 
power of Christs’ mission, which is to “save 
his people from their sins.” We admit that 
we are not surprised after all, that saving 
souls seems to be such a difficult task. How 
can it be otherwise? Many of our pulpits 
have nothing better to offer than a sinning 
religion; thus, not only misleading the peo- 
ple by teaching the impossibility of a victo- 
rious life, but actually sowing the seeds of 
infidelity and skepticism from the very pul- 
pit that ought to honor and exalt the Christ 
as a Savior from all sin. No wonder that 
many people do not want Christ in their 
lives, when He is presented to them as a 
failure, coming to save His people from their 
sins, yet unable to do so. 

Surely they are not to be blamed for not 
wanting our religion, which appears to do 
nothing for us but give us a name to live 
without the power to do so. Thank God ! He 
Who has called us has also power to redeem 
us. “He is able to save to the uttermost .” 
(Heb. 7:25). 


CHAPTER VI. 

WHAT SAITH THE LORD? 

Many people never read their Bibles ; oth- 
ers are only casual readers; and compara- 
tively few are really students of the Word of 
Life. From the hasty reader many beauti- 
ful truths are hidden, while the possibilities 
of God's grace are undiscovered. Many 
readers of the Bible remind us of a lady we 
once met who said she could not see sanctifi- 
cation in the Bible. We asked her if she had 
ever looked for it. She replied, “Well, I 
don't know as I have." Of course we are not 
apt to find anything in or out of the Bible 
that we are not looking for, and especially is 
this true when we do not want to find it. 
Thus those who contend that we are all sin- 
nerg, and that none of us can live without 
sin, are usually those who have not well 
weighed the matter, and thoroughly investi- 
gated the possibilities of grace. What an 
awakening is coming to the indifferent, indo- 
lent, gormandizing, pleasure-seeking, fun- 
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99 


loving, money-grasping, thoughtless multi- 
tude who are concerned only for the things 
of time, instead of those of eternity ; and who 
are interested more in their bodies than their 
souls. They seem to regard neither God nor 
man, and care not for the joys of heaven, nor 
fear the horrors of hell. 

It is not the object of the writer to teach, 
on these pages that we cannot sin; for there 
is no man impeccable, and all may sin ; but 
we do intend to prove conclusively from the 
word of God that we must not sin if we hope 
to retain the favor of Almighty God. As 
long as we are in a state of probation we are 
susceptible to temptation, and as long as we 
are susceptible to temptation we may sin. 
Every fair-minded person ought to distin- 
guish the difference between being able not 
to sin, and not being able to sin ; one implies 
that you can sin, but are able by God’s grace 
and help, to refrain from yielding. The oth- 
er implies that you could not sin even if you 
so desired. If the Bible reveals anything at 
all it most assuredly reveals the fact that 
God hates sin ; and as clearly reveals the fact 
that the devil hates righteousness. Now 


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the reader can take his choice — be a Chris- 
tian, God's child, and hate sin, or be a sin- 
ner, a child of the devil and cleave to sin. 

But to the question, “Must we sin?” The 
preceding chapter has dealt with the ques- 
tion from the standpoint of our volitional 
characters. We will now discuss the matter 
from the standpoint of the one source of au- 
thority in all moral and spiritual problems. 
Hence, the caption of this chapter, “What 
saith the Lord?” The popular idea that we 
get religion to stop sin is misleading; for, in 
fact, we stop sin to gain Divine favor. The 
prophet Isaiah says, in laying down the 
initial requirement of pardon, “Let the wick- 
ed forsake his way, and the unrighteous man 
his thoughts, and let him return unto the 
Lord, and he will have mercy upon him ; and 
to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” 
(Isa. 55:7). God's favor never comes upon 
a man in sin ; He is never pleased with a sin- 
ner; to say that He is means that He is 
pleased with sin. No one need to expect par- 
don while in a conscious state of disobedi- 
ence. In fact, no one is ever saved without 
prayer. “Ask and it shall be given,” is the 


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101 


scriptural injunction. Yet the Psalmist 
plainly declares, “If I regard iniquity in my 
heart, the Lord will not hear me.” The per- 
son who is conscious of disobedience in his 
life is not in a position to prevail with God 
in effectual prayer. Says James, the apostle, 
“The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous 
man availeth much.” Of whom? A right- 
eous man. Not a man who is a failure at 
every turn in the road, and who brags about 
the fact that he does not claim to live above 
sin, and so on, but a righteous man; a man 
who does that which is right, and has no re- 
gard for iniquity in his heart. 

But the old prophet further says, “Behold, 
the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it can- 
not save, neither his ear heavy that it can- 
not hear; but your iniquities have separated 
between you and your God, and your sins 
have hid his face from you that he will not 
hear you.” (Isa. 59 :1, 2) . No sinner , whether 
in the church or out, need expect answered 
prayer, either for his own, or another’s sal- 
vation, for God will not hear him, unless he 
first repents and forsakes his sins. Why 
does God refuse to hear him? Because his 


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sins have come between him and his God, and 
he tolerates sin in his heart. 

God does not hear the prayer of the 
church member who advocates and practices 
sin, any more than He hears the saloon- 
keeper's prayer. Dear reader, if you expect 
to cherish the hope of eternal life, and ex- 
pect to bask in His divine favor, you must 
not sin. Stop it now, for God regards not 
the prayer of those who insist on continuing 
in sin. 

The faithless prayer is the useless prayer. 
Sin is the great destroyer of our confidence 
in the promises of God; it mars our faith, 
and makes our prayers ineffectual. Says 
John, "Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, 
then have we confidence toward God. And 
whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, be- 
cause we keep his commandments, and do 
those things that are pleasing in his sight." 
1 John 3:21, 22. When do we have confi- 
dence toward God? When we love Him, and 
sin every day in thought, word and deed? 
No! No!! When we love Him and keep His 
commandments, and do those things that are 
pleasing in His sight. If a man says he 


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103 


loves God and keeps not His commandments 
he is a liar and the truth is not in him. See 
1 John 2:4, 5. Likewise the patriarch Job 
says, “If thou prepare thine heart, and 
stretch out thine hands toward him ; if ini- 
quity be in thine hand, put it far away, and 
let not wickedness dwell in thy tabernacles. 
For then shalt thou lift up thy face without 
spot.” (Job 11:13-15). When? When 
thou hast put iniquity away from thee, and 
■will no longer permit wickedness to dwell in 
thy tabernacles. 

Do not flatter yourself, reader, that you 
are a Christian while living in any degree of 
sin. God never pardons a sinner until he 
first forsakes his sins. Let us illustrate : A 
man is convicted of larceny and brought be- 
fore the judge; his attorneys admit his guilt, 
but put in a plea for mercy and pardon, on 
the ground that their client was driven to 
the crime by distressing need. They plead 
eloquently before the court, and remind his 
honor that the character of the defendant, 
up to this time, has always been above re- 
proach. They bring influence to bear upon 
the judge, and use every possible means in 


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order to procure the pardon. The court is 
convinced of all they say, but the pardon 
hinges yet upon one point: will the defend- 
ant refrain from a repetition of such con- 
duct? Before the pardon can be granted the 
court must be assured that from this time 
henceforth the defendant will be an honor- 
able, upright, and law-abiding citizen. If 
the court is given to understand that the de- 
fendant will try, in his poor, weak way, to 
do right, but expects to break the laws of the 
commonwealth every day, in thought, word 
and deed, it is needless to say, in fact you 
may rest assured that there will be no par- 
don forthcoming. Likewise, when the sin- 
ner approaches God for pardon, the first de- 
mand made is for him to forsake his way; 
no longer to regard iniquity in his heart, and 
to put it from him. His moral standing, his 
blue blood aristocracy, his financial ability, 
all amount to nothing in gaining God's favor ; 
the thing that counts with Him is, “Are you 
ready to break with sin?" 

If God has not provided for salvation from 
sin in His plan, then He has provided for its 
continuance. How does that sound? How 


MUST WE SIN? 


105 


would it do for us to preach that God has 
made arrangements for us to go on in sin 
and be defiled by it ; in other word's to preach 
that He sanctions sin in certain cases, espec- 
ially in those who are called by His name, 
and live in this world to represent Him. His 
representatives must have sin in them? To 
be sure, sin is the work of the devil, but God 
has made provision in the atonement for 
those who represent Him to be defiled by it. 
There are some people who seem to think 
that God has employed sin as a kind of 
means of grace to make us humble. But God 
never uses sin to work any grace in us. In 
other words, God has never asked the assist- 
ance of Satan in the work of redemption. 

Let us hear John, the apostle, on this mat- 
ter: “Whosoever is born of God doth not 
commit sin.” Is this statement true or 
false? If it is false, and those born of God 
do commit sin, then undoubtedly one sinner 
has as much right as another to say he is 
born of God ; but if it is true, no person who 
commits sin can be born of God. The dis- 
criminating element, therefore, between a 
child of God and a child of the devil as we 


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have already shown, is in the fact that one 
sins and the other does not. Now, if you 
just cannot keep from sinning, then take 
your stand with the devil, your father, for 
'Ye are of your father, the devil.” We are 
not in sympathy with the doctrine of modern 
times which emphasizes the common father- 
hood of God and the brotherhood of man. 
We repudiate it as being unscriptural. God 
is no more the sinners father than the presi- 
dent of the United States is the writer's 
father. We plainly see they are of their 
father, the devil, as we have just quoted 
above. True, God is the creator of all man- 
kind, but the father only of those who are 
bom of His Spirit, and made partakers of 
His divine nature; and when we are the re- 
cipients of His transforming power, we no 
longer commit sin. ‘Tn this the children of 
God are manifest from the children of the 
devil.” 1 John 3:10. In what? In that one 
sins and the other does not. 

Could the race have been saved, or could 
God have been reconciled in any degree to 
sin in His people, it is not likely He would 
have provided a redemption at such an infin- 


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ite cost. But because sin is of the devil and 
produces death wherever it exists, and ulti- 
mately means the damnation of its slaves, 
therefore, “For this purpose the Son of God 
was manifested that he might destroy the 
works of the devil.” (1 John 3:8). What 
did you say was the purpose of His manifes- 
tation? “That he might destroy the works 
of the devil.” Reader, have you been in the 
habit of reading this scripture, suppress, or 
contend with, instead of destroy ? Thank 
God, it is destroy; and He is amply able to 
fulfill the purpose of His manifestation. 

Webster says destroy means: “To put an 
end to.” Exactly; that is the object of the 
mission of Jesus Christ, to put an end to sin 
in our lives, and enable us to live triumph- 
antly, through Him Who gave Himself 
for us, that He might redeem us from all 
iniquity. If, after coming to earth, bleeding, 
dying, and rising again, He is unable to ac- 
complish the object of His mission, then the 
purpose of God is defeated and our case is 
hopeless. Let us not thus deny our Lord and 
His power to save ; and let us further see to 
it that all which He came to do for us is ac- 


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complished in our souls, and that we have a 
victorious testimony concerning our every- 
day life. 

But again, we read in the word of God, 
(Rom. 6:11) “Likewise reckon ye yourselves 
to be dead indeed unto sin.” If we are right 
in our conception of the nature of God, and 
have any idea at all as to His desires con- 
cerning His creatures, we are fully persuad- 
ed that God does not love a hypocrite, that 
He does not want us to profess falsely, and 
that He does not want us to pretend to be 
that which we are not, yet here He says: 
“Reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto 
sin.” Does He want us to reckon a lie? Most 
assuredly no! He wants us to reckon our- 
selves to be dead to sin, for one reason alone, 
and that is, because we are dead unto sin and 
may be alive unto God. But the apostle con- 
tinues : “Let not sin therefore reign in your 
mortal bodies.” When do we possess mortal 
bodies? In this present life only, this side of 
the resurrection. This being true, we need 
not sin here, for the injuction is that sin 
shall not reign over us while in our mortal 
bodies. Thank God for a possible, present, 


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and victorious experience of Christian piety. 

But the apostle further emphasizes a pos- 
sible deliverance from sin by declaring, 4 ‘For 
sin shall not have dominion over you.” 
Where is the bogus preacher, that blind lead- 
er of the blind, that minister of Satan, 
posing as a minister of righteousness, that 
can fly into the face of such plain statements, 
and, contradicting them all, with many oth- 
ers, preach a Christ who has the purpose but 
not the power to deliver, and who declares 
that we just must sin? Where is that pillar 
in the church that raised such a disturbance 
and got so mad when he was told he could 
be saved and kept from his sins? Many 
people seem to be especially afraid that they 
will get grace and cannot sin. No danger 
of such. You can never reach a place in pro- 
bation where you cannot sin, but you will, 
and must reach the place in grace where you 
need not, and do not sin. If there was a 
place however, in grace where we could not 
sin, the writer would certainly be a candi- 
date for this experience. But, alas, there is 
no such state while on probation. 

If the average person were as fearful of not 


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being good enough, as he is of being too good, 
the world would be better, the standard of 
piety better, the church held in more re- 
spect, and God glorified where He is now dis- 
honored. Every Christian's business should 
be to glorify God. How, by sinning every 
day in thought, word and deed? No, a thou- 
sand times no ; but by righteous and consis- 
tent Christian living. 

The apostle to the church at Corinth says : 
“For ye are bought with a price: therefore 
glorify God in your body and in your spirit, 
which are his." (1 Cor. 6:20). Or, as Jesus 
says : “Let your light so shine before men that 
others may see your good works and glorify 
your Father which is in heaven." Matt. 5:16. 
See what? Your daily sinning and repent- 
ing? No indeed, your good works. Do we 
glorify God by sinning a little every day? 
Never. If we obey these, and hundreds of 
other Scriptures, we must not sin. For God 
is never glorified in or by sin. To sin is to 
dishonor and grieve Him. 

“My little children, these things I write 
unto you that ye sin not." This scripture 
plainly teaches us that it is God's purpose, 


MUST WE SIN? 


Ill 


that we should not sin ; yet the context, “and 
if any man sin,” simply shows that no man 
is impeccable, and that all might sin, in 
which case we have an advocate with the 
Father. Who is it, the priest? No! The 
Virgin Mary? No! The preacher? No! 
Jesus Christ, the righteous ; He is the one 
mediator between God and man. The fact, 
however, that we have an intercessor and 
advocate, in nowise implies that we must sin, 
any more than having an insurance policy 
on my property implies that I must burn it 
down. Both alike are simply provisions 
made in case of misfortune. 

Scriptures almost without number can be 
given which show conclusively that it is 
God's purpose and plan that we be saved 
here and now from our sins. Titus 2 :11, 14 ; 
2 Tim. 2:19; 1 John 1:7; Gal. 1:4; John 8: 
34-36; John 8:11; 1 Cor. 15:34; 1 Cor. 10: 
13; Jude 24:25, and many others equally as 
clear. Is it a fact that all these high sound- 
ing promises are false and misleading, and 
do not mean what they say? Is it a fact that 
after all the Bible condemns sin, we are still 
hopeless slaves to it? Is it a fact that after 


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God's Son has died to save us from our sins 
we are yet hopelessly in bondage to them? 
Is this all the plan of salvation can do? Were 
the life, the miracles, the sublime examples, 
the death, and the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ all given to provide a salvation that is 
inadequate to our need? How absurd to 
think of charging God with such folly as to 
issue a code of laws and governmental prin- 
ciples that His people can never keep! Do 
not thus dishonor God with your ignorance 
and infidelity concerning His promises; for 
not to know them is ignorance and not to be- 
lieve them is infidelity. 

Let us notice these scriptures briefly and 
pass on. It seems to the writer that com- 
ment could not make them any clearer. In 
Titus 2:11, 14, we have a statement both of 
the purpose and the power of Christ's mis- 
sion into the world, “That we should live 
soberly, righteously and godly in this present 
world” because He gave Himself “that he 
might redeem us from all iniquity ” Has His 
great sacrifice been made in vain, and are we 
unable to live righteously and godly in this 
present world? Or, is it possible that we 


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113 


are measuring up to this standard when we 
are sinning every day? Can Christ redeem 
us from all iniquity, or is this all a mistake, 
a mistranslation, ojgfhe product of an imag- 
inary mind? No. Thank God, He is suffic- 
iently able to perform the work in every 
human soul, and to redeem us fully here and 
now. 

Reader, Stop ! Look ! Listen ! Are you pro- 
fessing to be a disciple of Christ, and at the 
same time repudiating the statements of His 
book and denying the possibilities of His 
grace? Do you belong to that multitude, 
that “having a form of godliness deny the 
power thereof ?” This condition, says the 
apostle, is characteristic of the last days; 
great churches, great choirs, great preach- 
ers, great show, no power. If the truth of 
this statement is doubted it can easily be 
proven by going into the average large and 
fashionable church and attempting to testify 
to the power and possibility of Christ to 
save His people from all sin here and now. 
A few testimonies of this kind soon become 
offensive, and it is likely if repeated a few 
times, the testifier will be waited upon by a 


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committee, and asked to further refrain 
from such statements. What is the matter? 
Nothing, only they are unbelievers, denying 
the power of God, but having a form of god- 
liness. Be it said to our shame, that only in 
a minority of places is Jesus held up as an 
efficient and present Saviour. Why should a 
man be looked upon by those who claim to be 
Christians, as a crank or fanatic, simply be- 
cause he dares to believe God's word and His 
power to save. A certain class of people 
today are laying great stress on the state- 
ment, “He that believeth and is baptized 
shall be saved;" and yet they, of all people, 
ought to have the least to say about believ- 
ing, for they deny His power to deliver from 
sin in this present viorld. This brands them 
not as believers but as unbelievers. The 
statement when put into practice is true ; but 
no man is a believer who denies the power 
and repudiates the possibility of his Saviour 
being able to save him from his sins. The 
belief in the historical Christ alone cannot 
save. We must know Him as an efficient and 
present deliverer from our sins. 

Second Timothy 2 :19 is another very clear 


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115 


statement as to what the Christian's relation 
to sin should be. “Let him," says the apos- 
tle, “depart from iniquity." Does the read- 
er really desire to follow Jesus and be a New 
Testament Christian? Then remember that 
“Christ suffered, leaving us an example, that 
we should follow in his steps who did no sin” 
1 Pet. 2 :21, 22. No man can be made by any 
perversion of language, to be a follower of 
Jesus, and sin every day. Such a statement 
not only shows gross ignorance, but is irrev- 
erent and unbelieving to the core. Says a 
prominent writer, “Christ died to meet the 
demands of a holy law that had been broken 
by sinners, but never fulfilled it in such a 
sense as to allow the redeemed, His follow- 
ers, to violate it. He would have been a poor 
Saviour, a fearful leader indeed, and His 
people wretched followers, if they construed 
His obedient life into a liberty granted them 
to transgress that which He so gloriously 
honored. His plan was not to fill the world 
with commandment-breaking antinomians, 
but law-keeping Christians." “Again, take the 
name of Saviour. If Christ is called by any 
one name more than another it is Saviour. 


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He is called over and over the Saviour of the 
world. No one can question that this is, 
without any controversy, His God-given 
name. Now, what is the common-sense view 
of a saviour? He is one who saves. He is 
not one who merely offers to save, but he 
must of necessity, from the very nature of 
the name, be one who actually does it. The 
only claim to the name lies in the fact behind 
the name. We might as well call a man a 
king who had offered to reign, as to call a 
man a savior who has only offered to save. 
When, then, we say Christ is our Saviour, 
what are we thinking of Him ? Do we think 
of Him as one who is actually saving us 
now? Or do we think of Him as one who 
only offers to save us at some future time.” 

Obedience is indispensable if we anticipate 
the reward and blessing promised in the 
scripture. If I yield myself up into the care 
of a physician, and trust him to cure me, I 
must of course obey his orders. If I am 
traveling through a strange country and em- 
ploy a guide, I must go as he directs. No 
physician, no matter how skillful he may be 
can cure me if I disregard his instructions 


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117 


and do not dbey his orders. If we expect the 
Lord to protect us and help us in time of 
need, we must first be obedient to His orders, 
and walks as He directs. 

The next two scriptures, 1 John 1:7 and 
Heb. 7 :25, form a close analogy, and simply 
bring to the mind of the reader the efficiency 
and sufficiency of our Saviour. “His blood 
cleanseth us from all sin” Is this true? 
Thank God, it is. “He is able to save to the 
uttermost.” How much? To the uttermost. 
The word here translated uttermost is pan- 
teles, and has a compound significance, that 
is of being complete and continual , and 
simply means, He is able to save and to keep 
saved. 

There are many scriptures which we would 
like to present in this chapter, so that it will 
be necessary for us to shorten our comments 
on this, and pass on to the next. In Gal. 
1 :4, we are again reminded of the mission of 
Christ, “That he might deliver us from this 
present evil world.” Can He do so? If not, 
then again we must bow our heads in shame 
and humiliation, and acknowledge to the 
world that the Christ whom we love and 
serve is a failure. 


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It has, undoubtedly, always been the pur- 
pose and plan of the Almighty to deliver us 
from the bondage of sin, as will be seen from 
the apostle's statement in Eph. 1:4. Here 
you will observe, “He hath chosen us in him 
before the foundation of the world, that we 
should he holy and without blame before him 
in love." Here it is conceived in the great 
infinite mind of God, even before the founda- 
tion of the world, that we should be holy 
and without blame. Notice, we are to be 
without blame before God, not man ; man is 
often a hard, incompetent, unkind judge. We 
can never fully please men; Christ Himself 
was unable to do so, and even with His pure, 
spotless, sinless, blameless life, they said, 
“He hath a devil.” “We know this man, he 
is a sinner,” and so on. We can please God, 
(though not in sin). Enoch had this testi- 
mony, “that he pleased God.” We can do our 
best to please men. But no man can be holy 
and without blame, when he knows he is do- 
ing the things he ought not to do, and leaving 
undone the things that he ought to do. To 
be without blame before Him who is a dis- 
cerner of the thoughts and intents of the 


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119 


heart means that we must not sin ; or else it 
is to say that God does not condemn sin ; that 
we can be sinners, and yet without blame. 
What nonsense ! 

A real knockout blow, however, is handed 
a sinning religion in John's gospel, eighth 
chapter, verses thirty-four to thirty-six in- 
clusive. Jesus answered them, “Verily, 
verily, I say unto you, Whosoever commits 
eth sin is the servant of sin. And the ser- 
vant abideth not in the house forever, but the 
Son abideth ever. If the Son, therefore, shall 
make you free, ye shall be free indeed ." If 
this is true, and you commit sin, you are not 
God's children but the servants of sin, for, 
“To whom ye yield yourselves servants to 
obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey." 
(Rom. 6:16). “No man," says Jesus, “can 
serve two masters." (Matt. 6:24). You 
cannot serve sin and righteousness, God and 
the devil, or heaven and hell, at the same 
time. The line must be drawn, a discrimina- 
tion made, and we must either be Christians 
and abstain from sin, or sinners and indulge 
in sin. 

An old German once said in a testimony 


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meeting: “I dank Got for barbed wire re- 
ligion.” This was a new kind to the writer, 
but we learned the significance of the state- 
ment later, and found that his idea was, that 
you could not sit on the fence, and, therefore, 
were compelled to be either on one side or 
the other. We might add that this is exactly 
what New Testament Christianity will do; 
it makes us take sides, and will not allow 
one to give place to, or compromise with, sin. 
Even to attempt to be neutral is impossible, 
as you will note from the words of Jesus, 
“He that is not with me is against me.” 
(Matt. 12 :30) . The fact, therefore, that you 
are not for God, brands you as being against 
Him. May the good Lord save us from the 
standard of piety that only labels us Chris- 
tians in name, and leaves us sinners by prac- 
tice. Having a name to live, yet being dead. 

Perhaps the reader, by this time, may have 
in his heart a desire to live a victorious life, 
but is inclined to believe that, being placed 
in his peculiar situation it is impossible to do 
so. This is often the case ; men in every vo- 
cation in life seem to think their lot is the 
most difficult, and their surroundings the 


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most perplexing in which to live right. This 
is a mistake, for Paul assures us that “There 
hath no temptation taken you, but such as is 
common to man,” and that “God is faithful, 
and will not suffer you to be tempted above 
that ye are able to bear.” This is, indeed, a 
blessed promise, fraught with a world of en- 
couragement to honest souls. It leaves ev- 
ery one without excuse for his sins and per- 
mits no one to be tempted beyond the point 
of all possible resistance, and makes it pos- 
sible for us to fulfill the scriptural injunction, 
“Be not overcome with evil but overcome 
evil with good.” (Rom. 12:21). 

Though we might use numberless other 
scriptures to show God's attitude toward sin, 
and His provision for our deliverance, we 
will close this chapter with a very blessed 
and appropriate benediction from Jude 24: 
25, “Now unto him that is able to keep you 
from falling” Able to do what? To keep 
you from falling . Is he? Is He ? Is He 
really able to keep us from falling, or is all 
this a mistake, or the product of a fanatical 
imagination? Is it possible that Jude is mis- 
taken in this matter, just a little beside him- 


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self, overstepping the mark, and saying He is 
able when he meant unable? If Jude is right 
then the person who says we must sin is 
wrong, for if to sin is not to fall, pray tell me 
what in the mind of the reader does it mean 
to fall, what does it take to constitute the de- 
feat of a Christian? Reader, the Bible is a 
dependable book ; read it, understand it, obey 
it, do not try to dodge its plain teaching ; do 
not shirk your responsibility to God. Clean 
up, brace up, look up, and measure up; stop 
your sinning or else pull down your sign, 
take in your shingle, and no longer profess 
to be a Christian, when in practice you are 
a sinner. 

Do not so grossly misrepresent the power 
of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and deny the 
possibilities of His grace, as to be a stumb- 
ling-block for sinners, the laughing-stock of 
infidels, and an object of the pitiful contempt 
f high heaven. It is a strange thing, indeed, 
that you can ask in any average congrega- 
tion, “How many are endeavoring to live 
without sin?” and you will find scarcely 
none, sometimes, perhaps, not a single mem- 
ber. Then turn and ask them, “How many 


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123 


are justified ?" and nearly everyone of the 
same ones who say they are not living with- 
out sin, will say they are justified. This is 
simply to say that sinners are justified, God 
is reconciled to us while we are sinning. 
What a travesty on the salvation that cost 
the blood of God's own Son! We are sure 
that Jesus did not die that we might continue 
in sin. We are not only commanded not to 
sin, but we are also commanded “Not to be 
partakers of other men's sins," and still bet- 
ter yet to “Abstain from all appearance of 
evil." 

But, says one, you have only used scrip- 
tures of your own selection. There are oth- 
ers which prove that we must all sin. Let us 
present our side of the question. All right, 
we will do so. But to say that any scripture 
teaches the necessity of sin is a mistake, a 
fatal mistake. There are a few isolated pas- 
sages, however, which have been misinter- 
preted until they seem to teach its necessity ; 
but when properly interpreted the Bible nev- 
er contradicts itself. In order, however, to 
give the reader a fair and impartial discus- 
sion of the matter, we will investigate these 


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passages of the objector's selection. We 
have nowhere wrested a single scripture 
from its proper setting and meaning, and 
have been careful not to add to, or take away 
from the Word; for we have not forgotten 
that God's curse is upon the man who adds 
to or takes away from the words of His book. 
We will now proceed to investigate what the 
caption of the following chapter implies, 
“The Other Side.” 


CHAPTER VII. 

THE OTHER SIDE. 

It often happens that in teaching and 
preaching the Bible we allow too much of 
our sectarian prejudice and denominational 
ideas to govern our interpretation. Thus 
the Bible has been interpreted from a Cal- 
vinistic standpoint, from a Wesleyan stand- 
point, or from a standpoint of Campbellism, 
and so on, and certain scriptures are often 
made to bend to a particular theory. We 
have tried to avoid any such manner of in- 
terpretation, and have sought, without pref- 
erence or prejudice, to simply know the 
truth. God says in His Holy Word, “My peo- 
ple perish for lack of knowledge and surely 
this is true, for it is appalling to see the 
amount of ignorance concerning the Bible in 
this Christian land of ours. This is due to 
two causes, principally : First, the Bible is a 
spiritual book and must be spiritually un- 
derstood; no sinner really has the right to 
interpret the word of God, until he has first 
125 


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been born again and knows the power and 
possibility of the gospel in his own life. As 
the apostle says, “But the natural man re- 
ceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: 
for they are foolishness unto him: neither 
can he know them, because they are spirit- 
ually discerned.” Second, because people 
study everything in preference to the Bible ; 
other books are read without number and the 
pages of the daily newspaper are eagerly de- 
voured; while the Bible in many Christian 
homes is a dead letter, a neglected book. 
Because of this fact, all kinds of erroneous 
doctrines, such as Russellism, Eddy ism, Ro- 
manism, and many other isms can get a fol- 
lowing by preying upon the ignorance of the 
people in regard to what the scripture in 
fact does teach, and by seeking to please 
rather than save them. 

An incident showing how some people are 
acquainted with their Bibles, was related to 
the writer while on an evangelistic tour of 
the East. An old lady was reported to have 
stood up in a public service and declared that 
her favorite passage of scripture was, 
“Grin and bear it.” When asked where this 


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127 


scripture could be found, she said she did not 
know exactly, but thought it was in Paul's 
letter to the Deuteronomies. Another lady 
in Southern Illinois wanted the writer to find 
the scripture, “He that saith he liveth and 
sinneth not is a liar and the truth is not in 
him," for, said she, “This is a passage that I 
am especially interested in." Fortunately, 
there is no such scripture. 

Of all the books in the world, it is more 
important that we should have a knowledge 
of the Bible than of any other: 1st. Be- 
cause it is the word of life. 2nd. Because it 
is everybody's book, in the same sense that 
God's free air belongs to every one, Roman 
Catholic priests to the contrary, notwith- 
standing. 3rd. Because upon the proper un- 
derstanding of this book hangs our eternal 
destiny. Let us therefore look into the 
Word, and seek to know the truth at any 
cost. With this thought in mind we present 
to the reader the thought which is implied! in 
the title of this chapter, “The Other Side.” 

It will do no good to argue that two and 
two are three ; neither will it do us any good 
to contend that we must sin, and thus excuse 


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ourselves in disobedience, unless it is really 
true. What we want to know is the truth, 
the whole truth, and nothing hut the truth. 
Whether it pleases or not, out with the truth, 
at any cost. 

“If it is a fact,” says the objector, “that 
we can be righteous and live above sin, why 
does Paul say, ‘There is none righteous V ” 
If the reader will turn to Rom. 3:10 he will 
find, to begin with, that Paul never made 
such a statement, but is simply quoting an 
Old Testament passage, as you will note at 
the beginning of the verse, he says, “As it is 
written.” But where is it written? Let us 
turn now to the Old Testament and see. 
(For always when it says, “it is written” in 
the New Testament, it signifies that the quo- 
tation is taken from the Old) . In the four- 
teenth Psalm we read, “The fool hath said 
in his heart there is no God.” You can thus 
see at once to whom the apostle refers, “the 
fool,” “they are corrupt.” Who? The fools. 
“They have done abominable works.” Who? 
The fools. “There is none that doeth good.” 
None of whom? The fools. The old proverb- 
ial saying perhaps is true, “Birds of a feath- 


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129 


er will flock together.” So that when you 
see, or rather hear, a man taking up for, and 
siding in with the none righteous crowd you 
may know what he is, according to the 
Psalmist. But back to the text again, as it is 
in Romans. Let us read the context, verse 
11, ‘‘None that seeketh after God.” So you 
can see, reader, that they had not become 
seekers after grace, much less finders ; and if 
in verse 10 are meant Christians, the same 
can be said of the following verses, and what 
a type of Christians they are. Christians 
without ever seeking God! Christians alto- 
gether become unprofitable, verse 12 ! Chris- 
tians of which none are good! Christians 
who are deceitful, verse 13 ! Christians who 
curse, verse 14! Christians who are cruel, 
verse 15! Miserable Christians, verse 16! 
If this is a description of Christianity, to say 
the least, it is a very undesirable thing ; and 
so far as the writer can see, there is not 
much advantage in being a Christian, over a 
sinner, for it would be hard to be worse than 
a Christian. But conclusive proof that these 
are not Christians, is to be found in verse 
17. The distinguishing quality between a 


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sinner and a Christian is peace. There is no 
peace to the wicked. (Isa. 48 :22) . But they 
that are justified by faith have peace with 
God through our Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom. 
5:1). Yet those of whom it is said, “There 
is none righteous,” had never known the way 
of peace ; they were not even backsliders, for 
the way of peace they had not known. 

The reader will do well to remember that 
the Bible is a book that condemns sin first, 
last, and all the time. Whenever any scrip- 
ture is interpreted to condone sin, you may 
rest assured it has been wrested from its 
proper meaning; for such an interpretation 
would irreconcilably contradict the general 
teaching of the Bible. If Paul is made to re- 
fer to Christians in Romans three, he is 
made to contradict himself time and again 
elsewhere in the Word. (See Rom. 6:1-14; 
Rom. 8:1; Eph. 4:27; 1 Cor. 15:34; 1 Thess. 
4:7, 8; Rom. 6:22; 1 John 5:18, and others). 

We are told by Paul elsewhere that “There 
is therefore now no condemnation to them 
that are in Christ Jesus.” Is it possible that 
we could be without understanding, not even 
seekers after God, unprofitable, deceitful, 


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131 


swift to shed blood, cursing, miserable, and 
without peace, and yet be without condemna- 
tion? If this combined catalogue of unde- 
sirables will not produce condemnation, 
pray tell me what in the mind of the 
reader, will it take to do so; yet if these do 
produce condemnation, then they were not 
of Christ Jesus. 

Strange it is, indeed, that souls should pre- 
fer to wrest the scriptures to their own dam- 
nation (1 Pet. 3:16) rather than face the is- 
sue, and measure up to their responsibilities 
and privileges in grace. Such conduct is 
possibly due to the fact that the carnal mind 
is enmity against God. (Rom. 8:7). What 
excuse has anyone to try to make such a 
motley crowd as is represented in Rom. 3: 
10-17 to mean Christians, and 1 assume, there- 
fore, that no one can live righteous? “He 
that saith he abideth in him ought himself 
also to walk even as he walked ” (1 John 

2:16). Is there none righteous? Then 
John's record of Zacharias and Elizabeth is 
false, for he asserts, “And they were both 
righteous before God , walking in all the com- 
mandments and ordinances of the Lord, 


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blameless.” (Luke 1:6). None righteous 
did you say? What a mistake the Saviour 
has made in telling us of a certain class who 
need no repentance. “I came not to call the 
righteous , but sinners to repentance.” (Mark 
2:17). The none righteous crowd forgot to 
read all their Bible, but, like a certain silly 
bird that sticks its head in the sand and 
thinks it is entirely hidden, they stick their 
face in Rom. 3:10 and think “there is none 
righteous.” They forgot to examine this 
epistle further, or they would have learned 
that, “For as by one man's disobedience, 
many were made sinners, so by the obedience 
of one shall many he made righteous .” (Rom. 
5:19). In fact, almost from the beginning 
of time, it will be found that righteousness 
was the privilege of every human being. 
(See Heb. 11 :4). If there is none righteous, 
the inspired statement of James concerning 
effectual prayer is misleading, when he says, 
“The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous 
man availeth much.” (Jas. 5:16). What is 
the significance of Peter's statement, “For 
the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous , 
and His ears are open unto their prayers?” 


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1 Pet. 3 :12. How could the eyes of the Lord 
be over the righteous, if there are no right- 
eous? But hear John the beloved, ‘'Little 
children, let no man deceive you: he that 
doeth righteousness is righteous , even as he 
is righteous.” (1 John 3 :7) . 

We have not exhausted the supply of scrip- 
tures on this subject by any means, but we 
pass on with one concluding thought in re- 
gard to the "none righteous” ones. We are 
sure that this is not the standard of Chris- 
tianity that the reader will want when he is 
dying. And we are indeed grateful that bet- 
ter things are possible. And if we could 
have only one request in all the world grant- 
ed, it would not be that we should be like 
these, but rather that we might, in the last 
moments of our life, have a testimony like 
Hezekiah : "I beseech thee, Oh Lord, remem- 
ber now how I have walked before thee in 
truth and with a perfect heart, and have 
done that which is good in thy sight.” (2 
Kings 20:3). He did not say that he had 
done things he ought not to have done, and 
failed in doing what he should have done; 
that he sinned every day, and so on. No, 


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thank God, this was not his type of piety. 
Here is one man that could do that which 
was right in God's sight. But there are oth- 
ers who have been able also to measure up to 
the standard of righteous living, as you will 
note from the following: 1 Thess. 2:10; Heb. 
11:5, and others. 

Our next scripture, which we will discuss, 
is about as popular as Rom. 3:10 with the 
“sin or bust" crowd, and is found in 1 John 
1:8. This passage, however, is often mis- 
quoted by those who seek to make it a cam- 
ouflage for their sins, and is made to read, 
“He that saith he liveth and sinneth not is a 
liar," when, in fact, it really reads, “If we 
say that we have no sin, we deceive our- 
selves." This is an altogether different ex- 
pression. To have sin, and to commit sin 
are distinct and different things; one refer- 
ring to sin in the inherent sense, and the 
other to sin in the actual sense ; one has to do 
with condition, the other with action. So 
that in reality, the sin referred to here is in- 
bred, or original sin. The context will serve 
to show this more definitely : “If we walk in 
the light." Who walks in the light? Not 


MUST WE SIN? 


135 


sinners. Christians alone walk in the light ; 
they that are born of God and “doeth no sin.” 
(R. V.). If we walk in the light, the blood 
cleanseth us from all sin. Does what? 
Cleanseth us. Why not forgiveth us? Be- 
cause actual sin has already been forgiven, 
and the person for cleansing is now walking 
in the light; but the sin referred to, Which 
cannot be forgiven because it is condition 
rather than action, must yet be cleansed 
from the soul. Therefore, “if we say we 
have no sin,” (inherent sin) to be cleansed 
from, we deceive ourselves ; not if we say we 
do not commit sin (which is actual sin, or sin 
in practice) , which is forgiven, and nowhere 
referred to in this text. The text deals with, 
and has relation to, inherent sin, and not to 
transgression. This is exactly what thous- 
ands are doing, maintaining stoutly in spite 
of reason, revelation and experience, that 
pardon is complete redemption, and that 
they have no further need. “We have no sin 
to be cleansed from.” If such is your posi- 
tion, “you deceive yourself,” says John. 
Thus many are robbed of the grace of heart 
purity, either by saying we have no sin to be 


136 


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cleansed from, we are completely cleansed at 
conversion, and so on, (which is contrary to 
creeds, scripture and experience) , or else by 
denying and repudiating God's purpose and 
power to perfectly cleanse them from all sin 
in this life. In either case, the result is the 
same; they miss God's best. 

John, the writer of the epistle to which we 
have referred, was very familiar with the 
malady of sin ; He knew its twofold nature, 
as recognized by every Bible student who is 
considered orthodox, and knew the race must 
be cleansed from original sin as well as to be 
pardoned of actual sin ; must be baptized by 
the Spirit as well as born of the Spirit ; must 
be sanctified as well as justified. Hence, he 
is admonishing us to be cleansed. Do not 
stand in your own way by saying you have 
no sin, or need no cleansing, for unless you 
have been sanctified, in addition to being jus- 
tified, there yet remains inherent sin in the 
soul; and though walking in the light, and 
reconciled to God, you need the blood of Je- 
sus Christ, God's Son, to cleanse you from all 
sin. But whatever you do, never try to 
hide behind this scripture as an excuse to 


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137 


continue in sin. Put the scripture in its 
proper place and determine, by God's help, to 
measure up to your possibilities. Do not fall 
in with sin; do not plead its cause; do not 
identify yourself with it; for “the soul that 
sinneth, it shall die." 

We pass on now to the third passage, 
found in Romans, seventh chapter. We will 
not read the entire chapter, but simply that 
portion of it which is misinterpreted as an 
apology for sin. I am always reminded, 
when I see the multitude trying to hide be- 
hind what they interpret as Paul's experi- 
ence, of a certain passage of scripture which 
intimates that the length of the bed and the 
width of the cover is insufficient for the oc- 
cupant's comfort. So when 1 see the multi- 
tude seeking rest, and trying to cover up 
their sins with this chapter, I say, alas, for 
the bed is too short and the cover is too nar- 
now. When the chapter is properly inter- 
preted it furnishes neither a rest for the sin- 
ner, nor a camouflage for his sins. A futile 
attempt is made by some to prove from this 
chapter that Paul was a sinner by practice 
all his life; hence, they argue, inasmuch as 


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he was wretched, and did what he would not, 
and was carnal, they never expect to be bet- 
ter than Paul. 

To say the least, if these statements are a 
picture of Paul's experience as a Christian, 
they decidedly contradict his statements 
made elsewhere. In the sixth chapter he is 
triumphant, in the seventh wretched, in the 
eighth victorious, and in the seventh defeat- 
ed. Such conflicting statements concerning 
a man's conduct, if referring to the same 
time in his life, would be repudiated as relia- 
ble testimony by any court in the world ; it 
is therefore, useless, to say that these 
testimonies evidently do not refer to the 
experience of the apostle at one and the same 
time. Observe the statements in chapter 
seven. Verse 14, “I am carnal;" verse 15, 
“For that which I do I allow not verse 19, 
“For the good that I would I do not verse 

23, “I see another law in my members, 
warring against the law of my mind verse 

24, “Oh wretched man that I am." Do these 
statements compare with those made in 
chapter six? “Reckon ye yourselves to be 
dead indeed unto sin;" “Let not sin there- 


MUST WE SIN? 


139 


fore reign in your mortal body;” “For sin 
shall not have dominion over you “Neither 
yield ye your members as instruments of un- 
righteousness unto sin.” 

Even the casual reader can see that these 
statements of chapter six are irreconcilable 
with those of chapter seven. We must there- 
fore seek the proper solution; for rest as- 
sured, when Paul is properly understood he 
will not contradict himself. The only logical 
conclusion is, of course, that he is referring 
to his experience and the possibilities of 
grace at two different times in his life; and 
is showing, in chapter seven, his experience 
as Saul, the Hebrew. The seventh chapter 
of Romans is a kind of parenthetical chap- 
ter, thrown into this epistle, evidently for 
the benefit of the Jews, “them that know the 
law,” as you will note in the first verse of 
the chapter. Here the apostle is undoubted- 
ly relating his experience as Saul of Tarsus, 
and not as Paul, the Christian, as is seen 
from the following. In all the chapter, neith- 
er God, nor Christ, nor the Holy Spirit ever 
appear upon the field of action ; they are not 
factors in the struggle. From the first to 


140 


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the last it is I-I-I-I myself, and so on. This 
is never the way Paul speaks of his experi- 
ence as a Christian ; he invariably recog- 
nizes the companionship of Christ after his 
conversion. Hear him “Nevertheless I live; 
yet not I but Christ liveth in me : and the life 
I now live,” etc. “I am crucified with 
Christ.” “For me to live is Christ,” and so 
on. With these and many other like state- 
ments he shows the necessity of Christ to 
the Christian. “No man” as we once heard 
Dr. E. F. Walker say, “can live without a 
liver.” The Christian's liver is, “Christ in 
you the hope of glory.” What is the pro- 
pelling power of Christianity? It is Christ 
in you the hope of glory. What is the secret 
of spiritual power? It is Christ in you. 
What is the secret of a victorious life? It 
is Christ in you, the very thing that the 
apostle never once intimates that he pos- 
sesses in this chapter. 

As is plainly seen by verses four to seven, 
he is trying to persuade his brethren (the 
Jews) to accept Christ as the promised Mes- 
siah, the efficient Saviour; and proceeds to 
demonstrate, by his experience as Saul, the 


MUST WE SIN? 


141 


Hebrew of the Hebrews, — a Pharisee, (Phil 
3:5), his inability to measure up to his high 
ideals, and privileges of grace, as made pos- 
sible through Christ. As the Hebrew Saul, 
he was only doing what thousands of cere- 
monial Christians are doing today, without 
an indwelling Christ ; trying to be Christians 
without Christ; doing those things they 
would not; leaving undone the things they 
should do; carnal, sold under sin. “Oh 
wretched man that I am,” he continues, and 
so on. 

Thank God, the story does not end in this 
dark final. Paul has found something better 
than ceremonial, Old Testament, and impu- 
ted righteousness; he has found the better 
way, the new covenant, the victorious life 
(see Heb. 10:1-14) ; and climaxes his dark 
picture of Romans seven with the question, 
“Who shall deliver me?” “I thank God 
through Jesus Christ our Lord.” says he; 
and proceeds further in the eighth chapter to 
show his Jewish brethren in Rome the bene- 
fits of Christ to the lost and ruined race. He 
shows that wherein the law was weak, God, 
manifest in the flesh, in the person of His 


142 


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Son, came to condemn and deliver from sin. 
'‘There is, therefore now no condemnation 
to them that are in Christ Jesus.” (Rom. 
8:1). Reader, are you living in the experi- 
ence of wretchedness, or have you found 
blessed deliverance? 

Says the distinguished commentator, Dr. 
Adam Clarke, in his preface to this chapter : 
“The apostle, having in the preceding chap- 
ter shown the converted Gentiles the obliga- 
tions they were under to live a holy life, ad^ 
dresses himself here to the Jews, who might 
hesitate to embrace the gospel, lest, by this 
means, they should renounce the law, which 
might appear to them as a renunciation of 
their allegiance to God. As they rested in 
the law as sufficient for justification and 
sanctification, it was necessary to convince 
them of their mistake. That the law is in- 
sufficient for their justification the apostle 
proves in chapters three, four and five, that it 
is insufficient for sanctification, he proves in 
this chapter, and introduces his discourse by 
showing that a believing Jew is discharged 
from his obligation to the law, and is at lib- 
erty to come under another and much hap- 


MUST WE SIN? 


143 


pier constitution, viz., that of the gospel of 
Jesus Christ.” Undoubtedly, Paul is dealing 
here with the Jew, and is relating in this 
chapter his experience as a Jew, a Hebrew 
of the Hebrews — and as touching the law a 
Pharisee. He is, therefore, endeavoring to 
convince them of the advantages of the gos- 
pel over the law, the new covenant over the 
old.” These differences are plainly noticeable 
to all Bible students, and every reader can 
surely discern the differences between, and 
advantages of, Christianity over Judaism, 
of the new birth over ceremonial righteous- 
ness. Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhe- 
drin, was a devout Jew, thoroughly familiar 
with the customs, ceremonial and religious 
rites of Judaism ; yet the new birth, as taught 
by and made possible in Christ, seemed to be 
an entirely new and unknown privilege to 
him. It would be a difficult task perhaps to 
determine to just what extent Old Testament 
piety was imputed and imparted. It would 
not do to say that all their piety was impu- 
ted, and that they possessed no actual quali- 
ty of righteousness in any other degree, and 
that there were no righteous men except 


144 


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ceremonially; for undoubtedly there were 
many noble, honorable, religious characters 
whose fidelity to God, and faithfulness to 
their calling, made them to stand out on the 
pages of sacred history as beacon lights in 
dark places. To say the least, however, it 
must be generally conceded that they lived in 
a period of the world's history before the 
culmination of the great redemptive plan; 
and were not blest with such possibilities as 
are New Testament or new dispensation 
Christians living in the Pentecostal era. 

Upon this question the eminent theologian 
and Greek student, Dr. Daniel Steele, has the 
following to say: "The Old Testament con- 
version was a moral change wrought by the 
will of the penitent, influenced by the Spirit 
of God, rather than a new creation or a new 
birth. The very surprise of Nicodemus in- 
dicates that the idea of regeneration as a 
radical, spiritual transformation was unfa- 
miliar to the Jewish mind. The predomi- 
nant purpose may be changed from vice to 
virtue in reliance on Divine help, as in the 
case of reformed drunkards, without regen- 
eration. This is our idea of conversion dur- 


MUST WE SIN? 


145 


in g the period of Mosaism and under the 
preaching of John the Baptist. To assert 
that John's converts were spiritually chang- 
ed is to declare that John lost in a few 
months more regenerated probationers for 
Jesus than Methodism has ever lost in her 
entire history of a hundred and fifty years. 
There are many Old Testament converts in 
our modem churches. 

“It naturally follows that there was no 
permanent state of reconciliation, because 
there was no permanent basis for it in an 
atonement made once for all and all-suffic- 
ient for all time. (See Heb. 10th chapter). 
There was through offerings, a temporary 
peace of mind attained, but no satisfaction 
concerning the whole standing of the sinner 
before God. Full pardon was in the future." 

If the Old Testament plan could have ac- 
complished God's full purpose concerning the 
redemption of man, then the new plan need 
not have been inaugurated. Therefore, says 
Paul, “For the law having a shadow of good 
things to come, and not the very image of 
the things, can never with those sacrifices 
which they offered year by year continually 


146 


MUST WE SIN? 


make the comers thereunto perfects (See 
further Heb. 7:14-19; Heb. 13:9-12, and oth- 
ers). These scriptures, and many others, 
simply show the advantages, the possibili- 
ties, and the opportunities, of the New Tes- 
tament over those of the Old. The conflict 
of Romans seven is that of a Jew under the 
law, and is in sharp contrast to the possibili- 
ties of grace as shown in chapter eight. 

There is no Christianity without Christ. 
Many people say, “I’m afraid that I can't 
live it." This is right, I can't. God never in- 
tended the personal pronoun 7 to live a Chris- 
tian life; but, “I can do all things through 
Christ which strengtheneth me." (Phil. 4: 
14). 7 can “be strong in the Lord and in the 
power of his might” (Eph. 6:10). Christ 
dwelling in your heart, by faith, is the secret 
of spiritual victory He can bring you out of 
the seventh chapter of Romans, “0 wretched 
man that I am," into the eighth, “There is 
therefore now no condemnation to them that 
are in Christ Jesus." 

The degree of light and grace always de- 
termines a man's responsibility; do not, 
therefore, deny the possibilities of New Tes- 


MUST WE SIN? 


147 


tament grace by trying to make a camouflage 
of Paul's testimony here of the insufficiency 
and incompleteness of the plan under Old 
Testament provision. Do not overlook the 
fact that Christ is able to save to the utter- 
most. If the gospel of Jesus Christ can do 
no better for a soul than Romans seven, then 
the gospel is as great a failure in the recon- 
struction of character as the law, and the 
highest standard of Christianity is one of 
defeat and wretchedness, which is contrary 
to the entire teaching of the New Testament. 
Is it a fact that Christianity means defeat? 
Is it a fact that Christianity means wretch- 
edness? Away with such perversions of 
God's holy purpose and plan concerning His 
people! Away with such interpretation of 
the Christian life, as would make it a help- 
less, hopeless life of defeat and failure, for- 
ever trying to do the impossible! Such an 
exegesis of the scriptures is the product of 
men who neither admire the beauties of a 
holy life, nor know the purpose and plan of 
Almighty God in regard to His people. Away 
with the idea that the gospel is inadequate 
to the needs of humanity! Away with the 


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gospel which presents an inefficient Christ! 
Stand back, make way, ye false interpreters 
of God's holy word, who see nothing but 
daily defeat and humiliation ! Let the apos- 
tle be heard: “Thanks be unto God who aU 
nrays causeth us to triumph in Christ." 2 
Cor. 2:14. Here is victory, not defeat! 

One more thought, and we are through 
with this passage. The objector may say 
that this could not be Paul's past experience, 
for the phraseology of the text is in the pres- 
ent tense. “I am carnal," not “I was carnal." 
“Wretched man that I am,” not “wretched 
man that I was or used to be." This objec- 
tion carries no weight, however, as it is per- 
missible and often expedient, in illustrating 
a past event, in order to make the language 
more effective, to use present-tense phraseol- 
ogy. For illustration, a friend of the wri- 
ter's often uses the present tense to express 
an occurrence of many years ago. In relat- 
ing to an audience today an experience dur- 
ing the Civil War, he says : “I am standing 
before Vicksburg, looking into the cannon's 
mouth." Not that he is at this time standing 
there, many years having passed since the 


MUST WE SIN? 


149 


scene described actually took place, but he 
uses the present tense to make the descrip- 
tion of the scene more impressive, vivid and 
effective. This is precisely what the apostle 
has done here; and while pressing this pic- 
ture of his past experiences upon his hearers, 
he resorts to a description of the past, in 
present terms, in order that his appeal may 
be more effective. Dear reader, let us not 
minimize the possibilities of God's grace, but 
let us rather exalt Jesus as an ever-present, 
efficient Saviour, “able to save to the utter- 
most all that come unto God by him." (Heb. 
7:25). 

It would seem to the writer useless to 
continue further with this discussion, but 
because a few other isolated passages here 
and there have been picked out by our “sin 
or bust" theologians as texts upon which to 
base their arguments sustaining a sinning 
religion, we wish the reader to know we 
have not intentionally dodged the issue to 
present only our side of the question. We, 
therefore, note the two following scriptures, 
Eccl. 7:20 and 1 Kings 8:46. These two 
scriptures seem to be a sure refuge for the 


150 


MUST WE SIN? 


persons who seem to be so afraid of living 
above sin; and they read them with great 
assurance, and congratulate themselves that 
they have now at last found an unanswerable 
argument to sustain a sinning religion. Per- 
haps they may establish a sinning religion, 
but this will be no new thing, for there are 
over six hundred religions in the world, we 
are told, and most of them are the refuge of 
sinners. But there is only one salvation, and 
that saves from sin «. 

We could go on here to say that, even ad- 
mitting under the Old Testament plan that 
there was no man that did not sin, what 
right have we to measure ourselves by those 
who live in the dim light of the Old Testa- 
ment, “which was only a shadow of things to 
come.” Increased light means increased re- 
sponsibilities. It is neither wisdom nor 
piety, therefore, to try to dodge the issue by 
seeking out and misinterpreting an Old Tes- 
tament scripture, in the hope of making it a 
subterfuge for your hypocrisy. Undoubted- 
ly, the New Testament standard of piety is 
much in advance of the Old, as will be seen 
by the general order of the teachings of 


MUST WE SIN? 


151 


Christ. In the Old Testament it was “an eye 
for an eye in the New, “love your ene- 
mies,” in the Old, “thou shalt not kill,” in 
the New, “he that hateth his brother is a 
murderer in the Old, “thou shalt not com- 
mit adultery,” in the New, “He that looketh 
upon a woman to lust after her hath com- 
mitted adultery with her already in his 
heart.” For a man, in the light of the gospel 
of Jesus Christ, to try to justify himself in 
sin, by comparing himself with those living 
in the light that humanity had three thou- 
sand years ago, is inexcusable ignorance. 

But to the text, what is its solution ? The 
truth of the matter is that both of these texts 
are mistranslations, and both from the same 
cause. The reader of the Bible well knows 
it is God's Book, given by Divine inspiration, 
but that the translation from the original 
languages of Hebrew and Greek were made 
by human hands only, hence the error in both 
cases. But why the mistranslation? “Be- 
cause,” says Dr. Adam Clarke, concerning 
1 Kings 8:46, “on this verse we may ob- 
serve that the second clause, as it is here 
translated, renders the supposition in the 


152 


MUST WE SIN? 


first clause entirely negatory ; for if there be 
no man that sinneth not, it is useless to say 
if they sin. But this contradiction is taken 
away by reference to the original, which 
should be translated, ‘If they sin against thee, 
for there is no man that may not sin\ . . the 
truth is the Hebrew has no mood to express 
this sense in the permissive or optative way ; 
but to express this sense it uses the future 
tense of the conjugation Kal.” The same 
exegesis is given also of Eccl. 7 :20. Owing 
to the peculiarity of the Hebrew language 
which seems to lack a potential mood, both of 
these passages translated ‘sinneth not’ should 
be properly translated ‘may not sin,’ which 
is true ; there is no man that may not sin, but 
there is none that must . Thus the proper 
translation, like the morning sun clears 
away the fog, lightens the truth, and sweeps 
away every subterfuge for sin. 

One more scripture, and we will conclude 
this chapter. Matt. 19:17. Here the ob- 
jector has reached his climax, for presuma- 
bly he has listed the Saviour on his side. 
Surely Jesus would not misstate the case, yet 
He says: “None good but God.” We would 


MUST WE SIN? 


153 


like to know how it is that so many people 
try to wrest one passage of scripture from 
its proper meaning and give it an interpre- 
tation that is flatly contradicted by a hun- 
dred other passages. How does it happen 
that of all other scriptures, that teach the 
possibility of being good, they happened to 
find this one? Why did they not call our at- 
tention to Matt. 12 :35 : “A good man out of 
the good treasure of the heart, bringeth 
forth good things,” etc. ? Why not find you 
Acts 11 :24, “For he was a good man full of 
the Holy Ghost and of faith?” or why not 
look upon John 5 :28, 29 as an incentive to 
better living, “Marvel not at this: for the 
hour is coming, in the which all that are in 
the graves shall hear his voice, and shall 
come forth ; they that have done good , unto 
the resurrection of life,” etc. Or why not 
face the issue like a man, with Paul’s admo- 
nition to Timothy as an incentive? (2 Tim. 
2:3), “Thou therefore endure hardness as a 
good soldier of Jesus Christ.” There are 
many, many other scriptures which teach 
'both the advisability and necessity of being 
good. How did it happen that these were 


154 


MUST WE SIN? 


all missed, and the objector happened to 
lodge in Matt. 19:17? The reason is obvious; 
he is seeking to justify himself in his sins. 
Other scriptures, however, are too plainly 
against him for him to carry out his pur- 
pose, and inasmuch as these do not teach 
what he wants to believe, as a drowning 
man would grasp at a straw, so he seizes 
this scripture, perverts its meaning, and 
tries to shirk his responsibility before God. 

But, alas! This passage, like all others 
when wrested from their proper meaning, 
fails to justify them in their sins. Undoubt- 
edly, the goodness referred to in the text is 
absolute goodness, and it is true no mortal is 
absolutely good . God a\Ione has absolute 
goodness; He only is fundamentally and in- 
fallibly good; and, in this sense, He is the 
only source of good. We, the children of 
men, are “by nature, the children of wrath ;” 
and “all have sinned and come short of the 
glory of God.” There is no one who is nat- 
urally good, none but God. All our goodness 
is derived goodness, goodness that comes 
from God. Just as the moon has no light in 
itself, and could not shine if it were not for 


MUST WE SIN? 


155 


the sun from which it derives its light, so, 
no person in the world is good, in, and of 
himself, save God; and all our good comes 
from Him. Probably this is the very lesson 
that Jesus wanted to teach this young man, 
whose goodness up to this time seems to have 
consisted chiefly of what he had done , rather 
than what God had done for and in him. 

This truth is more definitely brought out 
in the revised version, which, instead of 
reading “none good,” reads “one there is 
who is good.” If this passage could be inter- 
preted so as to mean there were no good peo- 
ple in the world, it would contradict the en- 
tire purpose and plan of salvation, and leave 
us in hopeless despair, with a future too 
dark to contemplate. 

A preacher of the gospel once stood out- 
side the tabernacle where the writer was 
preaching Jesus as a sufficient Saviour, and 
able to save to the uttermost, and as he 
puffed his cigar, (so we were told) said, “He 
that is without sin let him cast the first 
stone.” And thus, in his ignorance, and lost 
in the fog of his cheap cigar, he could not 
distinguish the difference between a New 


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Testament Christian, and a crowd of Phari- 
sees, with malice, envy, hatred and murder 
in their hearts. These are the ones to whom 
this language was addressed. Perhaps the 
distinguished clergyman (distinguished for 
his ignorance of the truth) had never read 
what the Master had to say about this same 
crowd. Listen! “Except your righteous- 
ness shall exceed the righteousness of the 
scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case en- 
ter into the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt 5: 
20). Why a preacher of the gospel should 
want to compare a Christian to a set of ma- 
licious Pharisees, whose hearts were filled 
with hatred instead of love, and who were 
even then trying to trap the Master that they 
might destroy Him, is more than we can un- 
derstand. An individual must certainly be 
hard pressed for some ground upon which to 
justify himself in his sins to resort to such 
perversion of the Bible. 

Let us say in conclusion, that no scripture, 
properly interpreted will ever justify a soul 
in sin. Upon this question hinges our eter- 
nal destiny ; it will, therefore, pay the read- 
er to weigh the matter well, and to know the 


MUST WE SIN? 


157 


truth. It is better to be sure than to be sor- 
ry. “He that saith he abideth in him ought 
himself also so to walk, even as he walked.” 
(1 John 2:6). “For even hereunto were ye 
called; because Christ also suffered for us, 
leaving us an example, that ye should follow 
his steps ; who did no sin , neither was guile 
found in his mouth.” 1 Pet. 2 :21, 22. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

CONSEQUENCES. 

We now, as a conclusion, approach the 
grave results, or consequences of sin. Too 
much importance cannot be put upon the 
question of sin and how to deal with it. It 
is the element in life that settles our eternal 
destiny for happiness or misery, life or 
death, heaven or hell. And though many 
treat it with levity and indifference, yet it 
is destined to be the deciding factor in their 
lives, for good or bad, weal or woe, joy or 
sorrow both here and hereafter. Of all ques- 
tions in the world that need our careful, 
prayerful and earnest consideration, there is 
none equal in importance to the sin question. 
I care not what the duties or responsibilities 
or problems, which the reader must face may 
be, it is safe to say that none of them, or all 
of them combined, do not equal in import- 
ance the matter of properly settling the sin 
malady, upon which hangs the destiny of our 
immortal souls. 


158 


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159 


The sooner the human family looks upon 
sin as the horrible malady that it is; the 
sooner it has a proper conception of its in- 
evitable consequences, the sooner will it be 
made to see that it is no essential part of 
Christian character; and that God desires 
and demands us to break with it here and 
now. 

Who can describe the appalling conse- 
quences of sin? It is the author of every sor- 
row in the world ; it inspires every lie ; it is 
back of every plot ; it is the propelling motive 
back of every wicked act ; it seeks to obstruct 
every move for the betterment of mankind. 
If there is a man killed, sin is at the bottom 
of it ; if a bank is robbed, sin is at the bottom 
of it; if there is a girl betrayed sin is pri- 
marily the cause of it. It promotes all evil, 
and seeks to hinder all righteousness, wher- 
ever it is tolerated. If there is a move on 
the further civic righteousness, sin opposes 
it. If there is a campaign on to save souls, 
sin obstructs it in every possible way. It 
mars our happiness here ; it mars our health 
here; it mars our usefulness here, and 
damns our immortal souls hereafter. Surely 


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when we look at its dire results on every 
hand, you would think no self-respecting or 
decent person would ever want to be identi- 
fied with it. But, alas! here they are in 
great numbers, and worse yet, they are not 
atheists or infidels, but those who claim to 
be the devout followers of Jesus Christ; 
those who frequent the places of worship, 
and go away with the gospel of life and 
death still ringing in their ears. They are 
the ones who, in their mad pursuit of fun 
and frolic, act as if they had never heard the 
sacred declarations of God concerning the 
inevitable results of sin ; as if “the soul that 
sinneth it shall die,” “The wages of sin is 
death,” “Be sure your sin will find you out,” 
“Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap,” and many other like statements had 
no relation whatever to them, or their sins. 
In fact you would think by their conduct 
that they had received a special revelation 
from God assuring them that all such state- 
ments had 1 to do with others only, they 
themselves being by special divine favor ex- 
onerated. 

Be it known to the reader that there is 


MUST WE SIN? 


161 


nothing more certain than the consequences 
of sin. No man can sin and escape the result 
of his disobedience. God's declaration, 
‘"Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also 
reap," is His infallible truth; and the only 
sure way not to reap the result of your sins, 
is not to sin. 

If you would not reap, you must not sow. 
An erroneous idea has gone out in some 
places in regard to reaping. Some seem to 
think that they can continue in sin as they 
will, and then, when finally pardoned, es- 
cape the reaping. This is a great mistake. 
One of God's unchangeable laws is that what 
we sow we shall also reap ; and so it is. True, 
pardon does spare us from the condemnation 
of hell r but there are thousands of Christians 
Who are unquestionably saved from hell and 
its terrible retribution ; yet they are reaping 
what they have sown. Here is a man who 
unequally yoked himself in business with an 
unbeliever. He is saved himself, perhaps, 
but has heaped upon himself many unneces- 
sary burdens ; he is reaping what he sowed. 
The same may be said in domestic life; 
homes broken, lives saddened, though the past 


162 


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is forgiven, they are saved at great needless 
cost to themselves. They are reaping what 
they sowed. Here again is a man who de- 
ferred salvation until late in life, and would 
now give anything he possesses if he could 
adjust matters that have now passed beyond 
his power ; yet he himself is saved though as 
by fire and is suffering great loss. What is 
the matter? He is reaping what he sowed. 

Observe this in the very laws of nature. 
There are certain laws in the natural and 
physical world which cannot be broken with- 
out an inevitable consequence. For illustra- 
tion: There is a law in the physical world 
which says that alcohol intoxicates. The 
only way, therefore, to avoid being drunk is 
never to drink alcoholic liquors. There is a 
law in the natural world which says that fire 
burns. No one disputes this, and every in- 
telligent person governs himself accordingly. 
Why ? Because he knows that to break these 
laws means to suffer the inevitable result. 
The only sure way not to get burned is to 
keep out of the fire. 

There is, again, a law in the natural world 
which we call gravitation. This law says 


MUST WE SIN? 


163 


that all matter is drawn to the center of the 
earth. Do you doubt it? Go yonder to that 
precipice and leap off, and see whether you 
will ascend or descend. You well know that 
you will go down. Why? Because the law 
of gravitation has so declared it. If the 
majesty of God's laws is such in the natural, 
material, and physical world that they can- 
not be broken without an inevitable conse- 
quence, have we any reason to believe that 
His laws in the moral and spiritual world are 
of less magnitude? The same God whose 
law says that fire burns, also says, ‘The 
wages of sin is death." We have abundant 
reasons, in fact, to believe that His moral 
and spiritual laws are as rigid and unbreak- 
able without consequence, as His natural and 
physical laws. 

But you say, “Are there no exceptions to 
the rule?" There are none in the natural, 
therefore, we should expect none in the spir- 
itual. Let us illustrate: The law of gravita- 
tion says all matter is drawn to the earth. 
Yonder is a child innocently playing near a 
third story window. It suddenly, in looking 
over the sill, loses its balance and topples 


164 


MUST WE SIN? 


headlong to the pavement below. The child 
is innocent; God is love; yet He does not 
suddenly reverse the order of His law and 
save the child. The majesty of His laws is 
such that they cannot be broken. If they 
could, we might expect most anything, in 
fact we might get up some morning to find 
that ice would burn, and fire freeze, and so 
on. 

His spiritual laws are equally majestic, 
and cannot be broken without the inevitable 
consequence. Hence "‘the wages of sin is 
death.” And just as certainly as water 
drowns, and fire burns, and gravitation 
crushes, just so surely does sin produce death 
and inevitably hell. In fact God does not 
say that “The soul that sinneth, He will kill,” 
but, “The soul that sinneth it shall die that 
is, sin itself will produce the death. Just as 
I would give a man a dose of poison, I would 
not need to kill him, the poison itself would 
produce the death, and upon the same prin- 
ciple sin produces death, physically, spirit- 
ually, and eternally, (the second death, Rev. 
20:14). Hell is the inevitable consequence 
of sin; and there is no respect of person. 


MUST WE SIN? 


165 


Let us see. Did God spare Adam? Did He 
spare the Antediluvians? Did He spare 
Sodom? Surely, if His commandments could 
have been broken and disregarded without a 
consequence He would never have suffered 
His Son to die. But listen to the words of 
Holy Writ: “For if God spared not the an- 
gels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, 
and delivered them into chains of darkness, 
to be reserved unto judgment . . . The Lord 
knoweth how to deliver the godly, out of 
temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto 
the day of judgment to be punished.” (2 
Pet. 2:4-9). 

Need we picture the first pair driven from 
that beautiful garden for one offence? Need 
we show you a world in the midst of one 
great deluge, the remnant of a God-forget- 
ting, sin-loving multitude of human wretch- 
es, scrambling to and scaling the mountain 
peaks, vainly trying to escape the conse- 
quence of their sins, until the last miserable 
sinner is strangled in the midst of a sea that 
knows no shore? Need we picture for you 
the wicked, bragging, scoffing inhabitants of 
Sodom, as, horrified in the midst of God's 


166 


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awful judgments, they run out into the 
streets to find the heavens on fire, and rain- 
ing everlasting burnings upon them in terri- 
ble consequence of their sins? Need we call 
your attention to the doleful cry that comes 
from the blackness of outer darkness for 
“water to cool my tongue?” Does not that 
pitiful cry touch your flinty heart? Reader, 
do all these facts from the pages of God's 
word mean nothing to you? Do they not 
make you think of the jeopardy of your soul? 
Oh, but you say, I do not believe them. Ex- 
actly. And upon what do you base your un- 
belief, that you are willing to risk the destiny 
of your immortal soul? Upon what ground 
do you fly into the face of the plain state- 
ments of God's word, and wrest the scrip- 
tures to your own destruction ? As surely as 
righteousness is rewarded with heaven, just 
so surely is sin punished with hell. 

But the consequences of sin are not always 
shoved off into hell. There are visible evi- 
dences of its dire results here and now. Its 
hypnotic and deceptive influence is seen ev- 
ery day. Why do men cleave to that which 
mars their happiness here, and proves their 


MUST WE SIN? 


167 


destruction hereafter? Why will they insist 
on serving him who at present tempts, but 
will soon torment them? Why will they pre- 
fer wrong to right, darkness to light, the 
devil to God, and 1 hell to heaven? There is 
but one answer. They are not themselves. 
Sin has perverted their God-given sense of 
right and their endowments to discern that 
which is for their best and highest good, un- 
til they are used for their destruction in- 
stead of their salvation. 

So manifest is the hypnotic power of sin, 
that it makes men think that because they 
prosper in their sins God has forgotten to 
execute judgment against them. On the con- 
trary God sometimes leaves a man to pros- 
per in his wickedness, withdraws His provi- 
dential impediments, and leaves him to pur- 
sue, unhampered and unhindered, his evil 
projects; allows him to bum incense to his 
lust, feed his appetites, satisfy his base de- 
sires, and to continue in his villainy and in- 
difference; but for all these things He has 
plainly declared, “He will bring thee into 
judgment.” 

It is true that not always is the conse- 


168 


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quence of sin manifest here, but if not here, 
it is sure to meet you hereafter. “Be sure 
your sin will find you out.” Men seem to 
think that because retribution is delayed, it 
is cancelled. As the wise man thus express- 
es it, “Because sentence against an evil work 
is not executed speedily, therefore, the heart 
of the sons of men is fully set in them to do 
evil.” Eccl. 8:11. Delayed punishment 
likewise makeis men reason, that beqause 
wicked men flourish, live in luxury, and die 
in plenty, God will not unsheathe the sword 
of His vengeance hereafter, because He has 
not done so here. Such, Satan has made his 
greatest ally, in beguiling and keeping others 
in darkness, they flattering themselves that 
somehow, eventually, they will miss retribu- 
tion, miss hell, and miss an awful eternity. 
They say, “Others may reap but not us, oth- 
ers may die but not us, and thus they con- 
tinue in sin. But, alas! they are doomed to 
an awful awakening, for, like a miserable 
criminal upon whom judgment is passed, and 
who is waiting for the day of execution, so 
they are under judgment, and it is only a 
question of time until the full penalty of a 


MUST WE SIN? 


169 


ibroken law must be met. Then it is that the 
Almighty will unsheathe His sword of ven- 
geance, as despised mercy, abused justice, 
the broken law, and rejected love, all stand 
before them in awful accusation, and de- 
mand that the penalty of the broken law be 
executed. 

The dreadful consequences of sin are 
further seen in its hypnotic power to per- 
suade men to wait until the last minute, or 
the hour of death, for repentance. And thus 
the terrors of the law, the threatenings of 
Sinia, the bottomless pit, the gnawing worm, 
the quenchless flame, the weeping and wail- 
ing and gnashing of teeth, all mean nothing 
to them because they are deceived, and be- 
lieve there is plenty of time and that there is 
no danger, for they can repent and be saved 
any time they care to do so. So that in 
reality their main business is not to quit 
their sins and live for God but merely to 
time their repentance so as to avoid the hand 
of retribution being laid upon them. If men 
can just be shrewd and quick enough to do 
this it will be all right with them. They will 


170 


MUST WE SIN? 


have enjoyed the pleasures of sin, and reaped 
the rewards of righteousness. 

But, alas! we cannot repent at our own 
discretion. Sin has so estranged us from 
God that no man can come to the Father ex- 
cept he be drawn by the power of the Holy 
Spirit. (John 6:44). No man can repent 
until he is first convicted of his sins and his 
need. This is the office work of the Holy 
Spirit. (John 16:8). Add to these and oth- 
er like scriptures such declarations as the 
following: “My Spirit shall not always 
strive with man,” and “Seek ye the Lord 
while he may be found.” There is but one 
sensible and logical conclusion, and that is 
that we must seek God when His Spirit is 
striving with us, and while He may be found. 
The very fact that the old prophet says, 
''while he may be found,” shows that there 
is coming a time when He cannot be found. 
Yet as one of its awful consequences, sin, 
with its deceitful, deceptive power, would 
lead its victims down to hell, by urging them 
to delay repentance, until the Spirit grieved 
has taken His flight from them, and it is too 
late. 


MUST WE SIN? 


171 


God pity the people in whom sin has so 
predominated as to rob them of their God- 
given and inherent right, a chance to make 
heaven their home. It had been better for 
them never to have been born, or to have 
been born brutes, or serpents, rather than 
that they should be intelligent creatures, 
made in the image of God, responsible for 
their own destiny, and, of their own choice, 
refuse to break with sin, die without grace, 
and be turned into hell, with all that forget 
God. 

Another reason for the consequences of 
sin is seen in the fact that God has a govern- 
ment; and in order to have a good govern- 
ment He must have laws, but in order to 
have laws that are effective He must have 
penalties attached to them. It often happens 
that in this life justice is defeated because 
of certain influence brought to bear one way 
or another upon the case. But not so at 
God's bar of judgment; everything there 
shall be revealed, and He “will judge the 
world in righteousness." One writer in re- 
gard to this says God must maintain His 
own character ; He cannot look upon sin with 


172 


MUST WE SIN? 


indifference. No honest sheriff can pass men 
unnoticed whom he knows to be guilty and 
wilful, and in constant violation of the law. 
No true judge can release those without pun- 
ishment who have been proven guilty at His 
bar. No jailer can afford to open his prison 
doors and let the guilty go unpunished. A 
holy God cannot let individuals, communi- 
ties and nations, which trample upon His 
commandments, reject His mercies and defy 
His authority, go unnoticed. There must be 
law in the universe, and in the end it must 
be enforced and the guilty must suffer. 
There is only one way to escape the punish- 
ment of God and that is to be found in re- 
pentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. 
Oh, that men would make haste to repent! 
“Now is the accepted time, now is the day of 
salvation.” 

Visible as are the results of sin on every 
hand, it would seem almost impossible to 
think that anyone would have the brass and 
audacity to deny it. Yet I hear the pitiful 
dupes of Mrs. Eddy's false and fatal exposi- 
tion of the Bible advocating that there is no 
such thing as sin. “Sin and mortality are 


MUST WE SIN? 


173 


native nothingness.” It would have been far 
more compatible with good sense and sound 
judgment had they asserted that Christian 
Science and Eddy ism was native nothing- 
ness. Says Mrs. Eddy, that blind leader of 
the blind: “Sin, sickness and death, is a be- 
lief only.” Such nonsense! It rminds us 
of what a friend once said of this miserable 
cult. It reminded him of a guinea pig, said 
he, "For a guinea pig is neither guinea nor 
pig, so with Christian Science, it is neither 
Christian nor Science.” If there is no sin 
what was the object of Christ’s mission? 
Matt. 1 :21 ; 1 John 3 :8. What is the mean- 
ing of such scriptures as 1 John 5:17; Rom. 
6:23; Rom. 6:11-14, and many others which 
we have neither the time nor space to give 
the reader here? If there is no sin what is it 
that makes men rebel against holy living? 
If there is no sin, what is it that has filled 
our jails, our asylums, our alms-houses? 
What is it that makes that army of drunk- 
ards, that army of libertines, that army of 
aristocratic God-forgetters, tramp, tramp, 
tramp on their way to the land of .deathless 
death? Is all this only “native nothingness?” 


174 


MUST WE SIN? 


Can we net observe the consequences of sin 
all about us? Lo, it is here; its dire results 
can be seen on every hand, the daily papers 
are full of it, the Bible pictures its results 
in no unmistakable terms, while the entire 
human family has felt its heavy hand upon 
them. 

Its present results can further be seen by 
the fact that it produces guilt and condem- 
nation wherever it goes. We would not say 
like some that “there is no pleasure in sin,” 
for we do not believe that this is true. If 
there were no pleasures in sin, Satan would 
have no pull on humanity. But its pleas- 
ures are only temporal and are more than 
offset by its sure consequences, its remorse, 
its shame, its guilt, and its condemnation. 
Many sinners try to appear happy; but in 
the still hours of the night, when they are 
alone, and conscience has a chance to speak, 
then it is that they are reminded of their 
great need. They appear to have no concern 
regarding their souls, but immediate danger 
of death brings the most arrogant and proud 
to their knees. Oh, who can picture a man 
with the weight of sin upon his conscience. 


MUST WE SIN? 


175 


A man with a clear conscience is always 
master of the situation. But a man with a 
guilty conscience though he be a king, yet he 
is a slave. 

Says Rev. Mr. South, the eminent Presby- 
terian divine: “God has annexed two great 
evils to every sin in opposition to the pleas- 
ure and profit of it ; to wit, shame and pain. 
He has by an eternal and most righteous de- 
cree, made these two the inseparable effects 
and consequences of sin. They are the 
wages assigned it by the laws of heaven, so 
that, whosoever commits it ought to account 
shame and punishment to belong to him as 
his rightful inheritance; for it is God who 
has joined them together by an irreversible 
sentence and it is not in the power or art of 
man to put them asunder.” Certain it is 
that many illustrations of this truth could be 
given, both from sacred and profane history, 
which we have not the space here to relate, 
such as David, Joseph's brethren, Haman, 
and others. Retribution always follows 
sin ; if it does not catch the sinner here, it 
will hereafter. 1 Tim. 5:24. “Some men's 
sins are open beforehand, going before to 


176 


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judgment, and some men they follow after 
and Col. 3:25, “But he that doeth wrong 
shall receive for the wrong which he hath 
done : and there is no respect of person.” 

But, says one, I am not a great sinner like 
these you have mentioned. I am not like Da- 
vid, or Haman, or Judas, or other such char- 
acters. True, you may not be an adulterer 
or a murderer, or willingly betray your 
Lord. Yet let us not boast too largely until 
we see what the standard of righteousness 
is. “He that looketh upon a woman to lust 
after her .... hath already committed 
adultery,” etc. “He that hatheth his brother 
is a murderer.” Be this as it may, there is 
no greater adulterer than he who, having 
pledged his love and devotion to God, goes 
a whoring after the world. There is no 
greater murderer in the eyes of the Lord 
than he who kills not only the body, but 
damns both body and soul in hell by his 
worldly, indifferent neglect of his soul’s es- 
sential needs. It would be better to steal 
pennies out of a blind man’s tin, than to rob 
souls of their blood-bought privileges, by in- 
difference and infidelity. 


MUST WE SIN? 


177 


But, finally and worse yet, the conse- 
quences of sin are not confined to this world ; 
and scenes more terrible, and retribution 
still greater than any yet encountered in this 
world, await the sinner in the future. Just 
what these will be we can only know by what 
God has been pleased to reveal to us in His 
word. Human speculation and supposition 
in this matter are absolutely worthless. God 
alone knows, and His word only, is authori- 
ty. Thousands are glad to tell you what they 
think and believe, and imagination is allow- 
ed to run to the extreme. Opinions, varied 
and abundant, are given freely. What we 
may believe in the matter, however, does not 
alter the case. We are apt to consider our 
feelings in this matter to such an extent as 
to allow them to shape our convictions, in- 
stead of the word of God ; thus many people 
believe, and argue, and contend, that there is 
no hell; partly because it is not what they 
care to believe and is not palatable to their 
taste; thus the revealed truth is discarded 
and ignored and is substituted with what 
they want to believe rather than what they 
ought to believe. 


178 


MUiST WE SIN? 


If there are no consequences of sin then 
many of the statements of Jesus Christ are 
meaningless. It was Jesus who said: “Fear 
not them which kill the body, and are not 
able to kill the soul, but rather fear him 
which is able to destroy both soul and body 
in hell. ,, Matt. 10:28. “These shall go 
away into everlasting punishment, but the 
righteous into life eternal.” Matt. 25 :46. 
Hear the apostle, “How shall we escape, if 
we neglect so great salvation.” Heb. 2:3. 
What do these scriptures and many others 
signify if they have no reference to the con- 
sequences of sin? How ridiculous to talk 
about heaven as a place where the righteous 
will be rewarded, and yet deny hell the place 
where the wicked will be punished. If there 
are no grave consequences to sin, why pay 
such an infinite price to redeem us from it? 
If there is no hell, in which to suffer the con- 
sequences of sin, there is no heaven in which 
to reward the righteous. The only reason in 
the world we have for believing there is a 
heaven is because it is revealed in the Bible ; 
and yet the same Bible that reveals heaven 
also reveals hell, as a terrible and awful cer- 
tainty for sin. 


MUST WE SIN? 


179 


It is wonderful how sin will blind and 
prejudice a man, so as to cause him to close 
his eyes to unmistakable evidence, because 
that evidence does not happen to reveal what 
he wants to believe. For illustration: A 
person dies testifying that angels have gath- 
ered at his bedside to escort him to the land 
of bliss, that he hears the sounds of heavenly 
music, and so on. Every member in this 
man’s circle of friends will believe his testi- 
mony; and they delight to call attention to 
his victorious and triumphant death. No- 
body questions his being rational, and in his 
right mind, but let the same man die, and 
testify that devils are standing at his bed- 
side, waiting to drag his soul down into the 
darkness of hell, and immediately they all 
begin with one consent to make excuse ; he is 
delirious, he is not rational, it is the effect of 
medicine, he is hysterical, and so on. Why 
accept the testimony of one and repudiate 
the testimony of the other? If both are ra- 
tional and in their right mind, both testimo- 
nies are of equal value, and equally true. 

But what is the final consequence of sin? 
It is hell ! Then, what is hell ? Is it annihi- 


180 


MUST WE SIN? 


lation ? Is it the grave ? Is it present conse- 
quences only? We have not the time or 
space to discuss this matter here, though 
abundant reasons could be given, as well as 
scripture proofs, which show conclusively 
tfiat hell is no one of these, are all of them 
combined. In fact we doubt if God ever an- 
nihilates anything. If He did, He would 
likely have in mercy annihilated the devil 
long ago. If annihilation was the conse- 
quence of sin then the wicked would have no 
more to fear in offending than in pleasing 
God ; and in times of distress and sorrow 
would long for hell, which would forever end 
their sufferings. If annihilation were the 
consequences of sin then all sinners would 
be punished alike, for there are no degrees in 
annihilation. This is directly contrary to 
the teaching of scripture as seen in the fol- 
lowing: (Luke 12:47, 48, 2 Cor. 11:14, 15, 
and 2 Cor. 5:10, and many others). If an- 
nihilation is the consequence of sin, then the 
scripture is indeed very misleading, for we 
have the testimony of one suffering the re- 
sult of his sins, who felt, saw, talked and 
used all the senses he possessed in this life, 


MUST WE SIN? 


181 


all of which is impossible in a state of anni- 
hilation. Is it possible that there is no dif- 
ference in punishment that comes to an ever- 
lasting end, and punishment that is everlast- 
ing? 

We cannot make the grave hell, without 
making many scriptures appear ridiculous. 
If the grave is hell, then when Jesus said it 
were better for you to have your eyes pluck- 
ed out, or your hands cut off than to go into 
hell, He only meant that you had better have 
your hands cut off and eyes plucked out than 
that you should be buried, or worse yet when 
the rich man prayed in hell for someone to 
warn his brothers, “lest they come to this 
place of torment” he only meant that he did 
not want his brothers buried. What non- 
sense ! What a travesty on God's holy word ! 
By what kind of legerdemain or grammati- 
cal jugglery can, “I am tormented” mean 
annihilation, or the grave? What kind of 
perversion of the word of God is it that will 
make such terms as torment and punishment 
mean annihilation, how can a creature that 
has no existence suffer, be tormented or pun- 
ished? We would like to discuss these mat- 


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MUST WE SIN? 


ters fully, but it is not our purpose to do so 
here. 

If the grave is hell, and the only conse- 
quence of sin we shall meet, then the right- 
eous go to hell the same as the wicked, for 
they all go to the grave. Hence, the right- 
eous suffer the consequences of sin the same 
as the wicked. What nonsense! When God 
wants to tell His intelligent creatures what 
the result of their sins will be He is not at a 
loss for words to do so. He must use, how- 
ever, such terms, and figures, and compari- 
sons as we are familiar with, so we can un- 
derstand Him; and what an array of terms 
he uses. They swing across the guilty sin- 
ner's path today like a red lantern of danger, 
warning him of sin's terrible consequences, 
in such awful language as, “outer dark- 
ness,'' "weeping and wailing and gnashing of 
teeth," "the worm that dieth not," "no rest 
day or night, forever and ever," and so on. 
Oh, who can picture the significance of these 
awful statements of Holy Writ? What an 
indescribable place hell must be ! Or, is it 
possible that none of these statements mean 
what they say: Nay, reader do not flatter 


MUST WE SIN? 


183 


yourself that you shall escape the conse- 
quences of sin, on the ground that these aw- 
ful and startling statements do not mean 
what they say. 

Away with the doctrine of no hell, no con- 
sequence for sin! Jesus declares the inevi- 
table result of sin. It is declared by Moses 
and the prophets, by Paul the apostle, by 
Peter, John, Jude and others. In fact no 
truth is more clearly revealed in the Bible 
than this. Away with the idea that it is not 
scriptural! No greater preacher of the 
consequences of sin ever lived than Jesus. 
Say not we are unkind and cruel when we 
tell you the truth. We had better be called 
cruel for telling you the truth than to be 
called kind for not preaching it. God help 
the human race ! The issue is before us. We 
must face it. It is true, it is true, “The 
wages of sin is death !” 

Let the imagination, if it will, encircle the 
universe. Let it vault the heavens! Let it 
sink to the depths of hell! Let it fly from 
word to world ! Let it delve into the secrets 
of science, and pry into the unfathomable 
depths of knowledge ! But do not prostitute 


184 


MUST WE SIN? 


God’s holy word. Do not wrest the scrip- 
tures to your own damnation. Do not lose 
the way of life. Do not miss the way to 
heaven. Do not stumble into the hell of the 
lost. Do not suffer the consequences of sin. 
“Sin shall not have dominion over you.” 
Break with it here and now. 






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